There was light in you even while you stumbled in your darkness.

There was light in me even while I did the same.

“I’m hungry,” you said. “Be filled,” I said.

“I’m under water. I can’t breathe,” you said. “Breathe with me,” I said.

And you did.

The ghost was almost gone, but we breathed together. In. Out. Come back again.

“Hold on,” you said. “You’re beautiful.”

“Hold on,” I said. “I’m grappling for you.”

Did you see it then?

The valleys are deep and they are dark and they are twisted.

The light in you lit my way. You said the same.

There is a higher place. Your high places. My high places.

We found one once, at the same time.

That was when you gave that gift.

“I see you,” and you opened your hand. You gave it to me.

It held the sun. Only it was bigger than the sun.

It was the you I saw in you. It was the me you saw in me.

It was gold.

The wind refreshed. Ghost, come back again.

I saw my eyes reflected in yours. Yours in mine.

“It hurts,” into infinity. “Yet we live,” into infinity.

“He sees,” you told me. “He stays.”

“He knows,” I told you. “He heals.”

“Hold on,” you said. “I see you.”
“Breathe,” I said. “I’ll help you.”

The ghost reminded me. I remembered gold.

For an instant, I remembered.

I closed my hands around the gift, but it shone through.

It was bigger than the sun.
It was brighter than the light in you. It was brighter than the light in me.

It was greater than the parts. Together.

But you looked away. What caught your eye?

The wind was blowing somewhere else.

I caught my breath, lest it suck the ghost from me again.

“Look back,” I said, and opened my hand.

But it wasn’t there.

Dry sand slipped through my fingers.

It was sucked away into a dust cloud between us.

“Look back!” I said. And when you turned, you didn’t see me.

Your eyes had turned to glass.