To Have Loved And Lost Poem by Sean McDowell

A boy a girl a garden:
it always begins something like this.
You awaken to find rock still pliant
from the Creator's hand, the stars burning free in the twilight
before being claimed by wishes and cursed
for incidents of fortune––
yeah, it begins something like this,
with traces of divine breath in your lungs
and the wound still closing just below your heart.

In those first moments, you never see
the end winding towards you through tall blades of grass,
or the flaming swords of angels
being lifted high into the dusky air just beyond the treeline.
And you never hear the word ‘death’
until one morning she wakes in your arms
and you see in her eyes something changed, something foreign––
as if she has become, or always been, a stranger
watching you from within your own heart.