Beside a stream in dappled light

We met beside a stream in dappled light where water played like mercy upon the stone, two wanderers who’d strayed too far from home, not knowing soft things carve the deepest bite. We stayed, we played, never learned to fight and spoke the only language we had ever known while underneath, it carved us to the bone, so gently that erosion felt like flight.

But I won’t ask the stream to change its course or wish the waters cut a different way. I’m grateful for the carving and the stone. Content to lay here gazing at its source, not asking anything. For now, I stay. Forgive me. I’ve never felt less alone.

I look at you and do not wish to leave our other lives, the lines we dare not stray the solid ground we thought we knew. And yet your hand in mine. I still believe I bid you now: please beg me to decay within this stream, beside you. [Break me too / Make me new].