I never drank so deeply of your eyes
as I should have.
Instead,
I gazed out over the sea
and waited.
I never told you why.
Why I stood each day
through bright sun
and driving rain.
Through winter’s gale
and soft spring breezes;
gazing,
ever eastward
over the sea.
I was waiting for the whisper on the wind.
For the world has a secret
that can be heard
only by those who listen.
Only on the winds
that come off the sea.
So I waited.
While you grew up
and grew older,
I waited.
I listened to the wind
and heard the world
at long last
share its secret.
When I returned to you,
I found you shuffling in the dark,
muttering incantations,
bleeding out strange rituals
and imbibing tinctures of venom.
I did not recognize your figure,
but in your eyes I saw you pleading,
for you had wrenched a secret
from the world as well.
A dark secret,
of the kind paid for only with souls.
Then I succumbed to you,
finally.
I looked into your eyes
and drank of your pain
and your loneliness.
No more words fell from your lips,
so I whispered,
softly
and you listened.
And after a few years
I told you
the secret of the world,
but you had already gone from this one.
I sat silent
as a mountain
and held you,
never knowing
if in some ways
our secrets were the same.
HG – 2106
