To Concede

Becoming Elation

0402.2025

(a four-part meditation on love and transcendence)

I

My last love ripened,

then withered on an unrequited vine,

and it was the fruit of that vine—

filling the cup of love’s want—

that left me drunk on its final flame.

I carry its want—still alive with its need—

pressing hard on fragile conviction,

threaded with memory and history,

leaving my longing loud and alive,

buried beneath the ache of this heart.

⸻

II

Who knows what love is?

Perhaps to know

is to feel it, first—

unimagined and strong—

the one pull toward a life worth living.

Perhaps it’s to touch the sun

and die by its fire-beam and heat—

to fall to the wound of its golden arrow.

Or maybe it’s the long, exhausted sigh

while held in the arms of night,

then letting the moon’s kiss

set you free from yourself.

Perhaps it is death’s own moment,

when your soul is mirrored—

or losing time, entangled in atoms,

suspended among the stars.

⸻

III

Never knowing love,

I’ll become a honeybee—

carrying life from flower to flower,

especially the dying and loveless

beneath dry soil and fading fields.

The ones reaching, barely breathing,

pressed beneath the weight of stone—

oh, cruel journey of life!

to let their lives begin in shadow

while being beautiful,

but unseen and ignored.

⸻

IV

Let me be the bee

that finds the beauty in flowers

during their time of dying—

so my elation survives

in another form of love—

a kind worth carrying

in the grace of surrender

and purpose.

m.c.f.

❦

On Emptiness

Receding

(For The Dead Inside)

0402.2025

You are receding—

falling into the horizon

like dusk devouring light.

I struggle saving you—

but even your shadow vanished.

When our thread tore,

it took the scent of spring—

the flowers had just begun

to color my smile

with the lie of joy.

Then came the light—

unforgiving,

unblinking—

dragging the dead

from my heart

into their graves,

and beneath time’s silence,

which keeps them

as captives.

They are like you:

a goodness,

a fragile fire,

burning out

and falling

into a lesson

inside a thousand

lessons.

I must be thankful somehow—

but the gratitude burns.

My eyes have turned to deserts.

The sun devours me.

The night drinks my life.

What goes unnamed

because you lied?

What am I to think,

now that I see—

the joke is me?

I will think:

Turn me into a bird,

so my wings break

from my hiding heart

and carry its sorrow

from night

into half-light.

At least.

I will think:

Turn me into dust,

so I forget

what I have learned

ten thousand times.

I will think:

Let spring

cover me.

Let summer

end this cold.

Let something bloom

in the ruin

of my garden.

m.c.f.

Photo, 2024, m.c.f.

Love Without Ego

I Still Do

(for no one, and you)

I love with a silence blooming in bones—

My love asks for nothing,

but still lights a lamp in the dark

in case you want to come home.

I love you like a prayer

when nobody is listening—

even when you vanish,

and the leaving is drowned in your absence.

I love you when your words turn to shadow,

or are lost on the air,

and your care stops calling my name.

You don’t have to earn it.

I never meant to give it.

It arrives like sun in the spring—

slow, warm, and impossible to refuse.

There are still pieces of you in my life—

the tone of your voice

curled around a word,

the way you linger

at the edge of your own heart.

You may never hold my heart in your hands again.

You may never say my name out loud.

I may never hear you.

But I hope,

when the noise grows quiet

and people around you forget to listen—

you remember how once,

you were deeply seen

and entirely loved

by a rose who asked for nothing.

I loved you.

Not to possess.

Not to be chosen.

But because some loves

arrive like stars—

brilliant, distant,

and mean to be carried,

not kept.

And I still do.

m.c.f.

Photo, 2024, m.c.f.

One Morning…

Aubade

0331.2025

A poem for the dawn that never softened.

For those who enter the light only to find the dark.

This morning’s heart awoke to death—

not a glorious flower

stretching its neck

to its own dawn,

but something gray,

unfinished—

a breath that never quite

found its warmth or reason.

No fragment of beauty,

no hint of song or

well-meaning hour

could lift the heaviness.

Even the air moves

like apology—

but not around me.

Everything is darker

in the light of day.

The voices wear tones

like weapons,

gentle only with each other.

I walk into their fire

and they lay the bullets.

They name me

before I speak—

a blur, a burden,

a failed warmth.

Not one of them asks

if I am broken

or just quiet.

(They assume I am

what they would be

if they were I)

And the cruelest part—

the mirror they mistake me for.

m.c.f.

Image 2024, m.c.f.

On Broken Thread

March 29, 2025

(The quiet severing.)

0330.2025

I let go with no spectacle,

no stage.

Just a whisper sent through wire

to say:

I saw what you could not give,

and I release you

to the wilderness

you chose.

m.c.f.

On Quiet Surrender

Night’s Mercy

0328.2025

The night’s splendor

pours through the window—

its silver secret sends me off

upon a sleepy sea of sorrow…

and I surrender gently,

like petals drifting,

learning to float

where I’d drown.

— m.c.f.

A Study In Goodbye

Soft Exit Tactic

0328.2025

You don’t vanish—

you drift.

A pause lengthens,

warmth thins,

messages arrive late—

their meaning lost.

You choose silence

like chiffon—

folded neatly,

placed just so.

The silent cut,

of unsaid words.

You ask to meet

knowing I can’t,

as though forgetting

is easier

than refusing.

(Maybe for you, true.)

I’ve read the script—

at first,

the slow retreat,

the soft descent,

the affection turns static

without a storm.

You’d rather fade

than fall,

slip the tether

without warning

or respect.

No reckoning,

nor flame—

Just distance

disguised as time.

But I feel you

exiting the room

while you smile.

I know

how goodbye sounds

when it tries

not to be heard.

m.c.f.