First Love

"...This was a child's love, and yet I clench my eyes
till the pictures return, unfocused at first, then
almost clear, an old film played at a slow speed.
All day I will glimpse it, in windows of changing sky,
in mirrors, my lover's eyes, wherever you are.

And later a star, long dead, here, seems precisely
the size of a tear. Tonight, a love-letter out of a dream
stammers itself in my heart. Such faithfulness.
You smile in my head on the last evening. Unseen
flowers suddenly pierce and sweeten the air."

from "First Love" by Carol Ann Duffy

Again I feel I've said too much, too little, and nothing at all.
It all blurs as tears fall.

First love that all these years later flows back from the past to flood the present.

The sweetest, sharpest thing I have ever known...

What I wanted to tell you

"They stared at each other under the ancient sky with the soft rain and full wet earth. More than anything Ephram wanted to talk to her and tell her things he'd kept locked in the storehouse of his soul. He wanted to talk to her about the way Rupert Shankle's melons split on the vine and how honeysuckle blossoms tasted like sunlight. He wanted to tell her that he had seen a part of the night sky in her eyes and that he knew it because it lived in him as well. He wanted to tell her about the knot corded about his heart and how he needed her to loose the binding."

from "Ruby" by Cynthia Bond