Don't forget me!...I'll always linger in the hollow of a sigh. I'll slip unbidden into your dreams... Don't mistake me for punishment! Smile when you recall my face, for my warm gaze will undo you... Love doesn't die when I do, I'm only leaving in the flesh. Don't forget me!...I'll return soon wrapped in some white remembrance, from an old album I'll embrace you, through a window, at your threshold. Then I'll settle softly in your tears...and in your long breath. I have no remedy for love. I can't even speak its name... Don't grieve for me, and don't wear black! Don't let your heart grow dim. Be glad that you have loved! Others live their whole lives without it— the gift to feel, to love, to live, to meet another's understanding eyes... Tell them our story! Let it kindle the dreams that fade in their hearts... And this verse I leave is no goodbye! I'll be just a sigh away. The rest...is only the path. And it is a test of what we are.
# A Sigh Away I know where the heart lives— in that small chamber where the ribs cage the whole wild wanting. I know the precise angle of your glance when sorrow passes through you like a bird through an open window. I know the weight of silence between two people who have loved each other into a corner of the world. I know that distance is not measured in miles but in the space between a breath taken and a breath released. I know the color of longing— it is not red or blue but the gray of early morning when sleep abandons you. I know that some words are too heavy for the tongue, so we leave them unspoken, suspended in the air like dust. I know that you are always just a sigh away— not here, not gone, but hovering in the pause between one heartbeat and the next, between the life we lived and the life we might have lived. I know that this knowing is its own kind of ache, a beautiful, terrible knowing that asks for nothing but the permission to stay, a sigh away, in the space where longing learns to be enough.
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