If You’d Forgive

A Poem

Photo by Bia Octavia on Unsplash

after Taylor Smith

You see how love can end: a shattered vase
and roses mutilated in the fall
their buds now bruised and velvet petals torn.
A simple flower, and we are so much more,
infinities that fold in complex shapes
and when we fall the shock can echo on
in overtones that none may understand
forevermore. You know I loved you once
in my jeunesse, a pretty little chord,
a major key, uncomplicated love
now harrowing, a fist against the keys
and break the dampers; drag it ever out.
You bust the vase and break the sacred song;
you laugh until you weep, “Can’t we move on?!”