A year since you first fell.
A year since life
changed its shape.
A year of hospitals,
care homes,
and waiting,
of learning how to carry what could not be fixed.
Before that I cared
for you at home,
and I was in denial
in the tender ways
that love can be.
Because you were
still with me.
Because we still had each other.
Because love was real
as always
even as I saw the signs.
I saw them.
I did.
in how the days were narrowing.
I just could not bear
to name them too soon.
This feels like an anniversary of sorts,
not of something
begun in joy,
but of something
asking everything.
A year of loss,
of devotion,
a year of standing
beside you
through the long long dimming.
Love stayed.
Hope stayed.
Denial stayed, too,
And still,
I love you.
Still I am here.
Still some part of us remains
in the middle of all this change.
Cloudia Charters