The love I had for you
was so much bigger
than the tiny locus
through which the story said
it had to come,
so much bigger than our forms

It started teaching me,
though I was slow to learn,
to cast my sense of you and me
much wider than the noose that claimed
it must contain us,
contain, constrain, with time and space,
and all the things we knew we didn’t understand

I look up now to contemplate
how we might be to each other
beyond the myth of human birth and death,
beyond possession and responsibility,
and hidden terror at the thought of failure

We would be loosed from those constricting ties,
and wouldn’t love each other any less –
it wouldn’t be proprietary,
but knowing you, I’d still be blessed.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 4, 2023