The Transit Of Venus Poem by Ryan Cole

I remember waking up in the morning, the hours before dawn, looking out your bedroom window, to see the morning star, Venus, as she moved across the sky. You would sleep beside me, unaware of me, or the star. I would watch, captivated, as she slowly made her way as the light would come, to the point where I wouldn't have been able to see her at all, if I hadn't known she was there. Even then, I knew that though I loved you and you loved me, we were no longer in love, that what remained was only a shadow, a comfortable, safe place where we could linger for a while. The difference between loving and being in love was never so clear as I watched Venus slowly vanish in the coming of the dawn, so clear to me, since I had watched her from the darkness, but invisible to everyone else, in the diffuse light of morning. We had loved and been in love once. Now, we held on to feelings we no longer felt as a shelter from the storm, frail and tempest tossed. You slept, as I faced a new day, watching Venus, the morning star, vanish into the growing light of the sun, but knowing, even then, that she was there, unseen, a remnant or memory, of what had been, what could have been, what would never be again.