If you erase me

I need you to understand this,

there are days when the moon hangs
like a silver wound above the world,
and I lift my eyes to its quiet radiance,
only to find your face hidden inside the light.

The autumn branches,
red with their slow surrender,
lean against my window,
and every leaf that falls
seems to carry your name
through the fading air.

When I reach toward the fire,
touching the brittle ash
or the scarred body of a dying log,
I discover the same truth,
everything returns to you.

The fragrance of rain, the gleam of metal,
the hush before evening,
the distant cry of migrating birds

all things become messengers,
small vessels crossing unseen seas,
sailing toward the undiscovered shores
of your waiting heart.

And yet love is not a prison.

If, little by little, your hands release mine,
mine will learn the language of letting go.

If your voice fades from my days,
I will not chase its echo.

If you forget me, 

do not turn back in search of what was lost,
for memory, too, knows how to close its doors.

And if one day you grow weary of the winds
that move through my soul,
if you leave me standing
on the coastline of a heart
where I planted all my roots,

remember this

the roots you abandon will not die there.

At the appointed hour,
they will tear themselves from the earth,
become wings, become sails,
and journey toward another horizon.

But if each dawn you choose me again,

if every hour your tenderness finds its way home,

if every flower that opens 

still carries the desire of my name,

then nothing in me will fade.

The fire will remain fire.
The light will remain light.

No season, no distance, no silence
will diminish what we have built.

For my love grows from yours
as rivers grow from rain,

and as long as your heart
continues to beat beside mine,

you will find me there holding your hands
with the certainty of roots,
and the devotion of stars that never abandon the sky.