Our Last Conversation

When the sun overfilled the horizon’s seawalls
we lay there still, the silence of night on our lips
the morning’s dew wrapping our bodies
the harp-plucking fingers of the stars
thrumming final vibration across the heavens.

What did we say, that night? Rapturous things,
lines and stories and sonnets
that now only night remembers.

I drew a picture for you, one filled with lines
simple and complex, lines like rainbows
arching over hard canvas, lines like pearls
strung across the night sky
whose brightness made the stars jealous
and whose self-contained glow
even our friend, the Queen of Faerie
and of the Undying Lands, embittered
beyond all recognition of loveliness,
one night when she lay looking at stars
and wishing that one single man in her realm
could bear the beauty of a star, or that one
single star in her realm could outshine all the others,
when she looked up into the night sky and saw
a string of pearls as beautiful and well-made
as a human spine.

I remember the picture; I remember the hope.
I do not remember when you, rising and shaking off
your blanket of frost-colored dew, decided
that no magic and no harpsong could match
the adoration of flashbulbs, the glitter of a thousand
grins all focused on you. I laugh
sometimes to think about it, but my laugh
is as bitter as the Faerie Queen’s grin.