They've been Shadowed.

Dark they have fallen.
Their faces caught in twilight
and dim their features go.

All memories of kisses buried in the ground.
I've found a new mountain.

Romance is not a scent. Not a word.
Not a genre of movies and books.
It's something out there in the darkness of night.
No moon to be seen--no light casting the way.

It's a blind stumble
with blood pooling
from gashed palms and knees.
It's a groping for
love and a hope
that comfort shall be
found at the end.

Plunging your hands
into the thistle bush
and grasping the electric fence
to only discover
nothing.
These can never be.

The clouds gather overhead
taking over the blue.
As the sun sets and turns to royal
and thin lines of eggplant, coral,
I gather my thoughts.
I can't see the bell tower over on the horizon.
The trees are gathered in dark shapes--threatening and opaque.

I stroll home and
pass a man smoking a cedar pipe.
He poses there with smoke tendrils shedding into fingers.
The smell of raspberry tobacco floats away as I walk on past.
I pause. "It means nothing," I whisper aloud.
I long for something.

But it's okay that I'm going home alone.
It's okay that the clouds move over the moon
and I'm walking through empty apartment buildings.
It's okay that when my key unlocks the door
I'll walk silent to my bed and slip inside the covers
to dream of his face to know
that it'll never be reality.

Cause it's okay to dream.
And it's okay to be alone.
It's okay to not know what'll come
from outside within the dark.