Hit and How

Listening to you from the sad vantage
of an age, of an age, of an age ...

How taken you had seemed one evening -
there wasn't any space for two to sit.
The bench was littered and the birds twittered;
a loose thread on my sleeve, I tried to fit
in the space, a universe, our shortest time -
and then you turned and said, said it:

that the light on my face and the fire
in your palm were the miracle,
and that we were to part until it hit 
me equally.

Sweetheart, I could overcome that turn -
you did not sit and I kept shrinking,
thinking in my heart that you were just
a candle I wouldn't choose.

Ever.