To Maya by Michael Johnson

At night, I still search the oldest light. I know the stars are not letters from the dead, but sometimes their soft glow feels too tender to be meaningless. Some stars slipped from existence long before their light reached us, yet they still shine, crossing cold distances as though death itself could not dim them. I cannot help believing love might linger the same way, moving through the dark and arriving in small envelopes whenever it is needed most.

You were young enough to trust forever, and so was I. We lived as though there would always be more time, leaving your chipped blue mug beside the sink, sleeping on the couch, our hands tangled beneath the faded quilt, making plans for places we never reached. I thought I would learn every later likeness of you, the face you would wear at forty, at sixty, in the quiet years when beauty softened into something deeper than just youth. You would hate the beard; I can almost feel your fingers fussing with it while you tell me it makes me look older than I am, though it is time, not hair, that has touched me without touching you.

Sometimes I set you beside me as you might have been, with silver beginning at your temples and reading glasses resting on the nightstand. I wonder whether we would still quarrel over the cracked-open window and the cold creeping into the room, or whether the passing years would have made us gentler. In these small imaginings, I give us what the world denied us, carrying you through birthdays, bitter winters, strange streets, and slow mornings. I let us grow old somewhere beyond waking, somewhere grief cannot follow and nothing is lost too soon.

The sky is crowded with vanished fires whose light has not finished finding us. I watch until the stars smear and my sight stings, wanting one more touch, one more quiet evening with your head against my shoulder, one more chance to say I would have chosen you through every life we never lived. Morning comes, spilling pale light across the floorboards, and the stars slip from sight; sometimes I still turn with a thought meant for you, only to meet the silence where your answer should be. I think of your love that way now: a light launched long ago, still crossing the distance, still finding me in the dark.