#vss365 #phantasm
The Beautiful Phantasm
Before the dawn
had learned to break,
before the sea
had given back the moon,
I felt you
moving through the dark.
The earth was breathing.
The waters stirred
beneath the weight
of the heavens.
And there you were—
rising from the mist
like something
the world
had kept
for me.
No name
had crossed between us.
No word
had yet been made
for such recognition.
Only the pull
of something older
than memory,
older than longing,
older than the first
human voice
calling into the dark.
You came close.
The wind gathered
around our bodies.
The tide climbed
over the shore.
And when your arms
closed around me,
the sea
forgot its restlessness.
I felt the warmth
of your skin,
the deep rhythm
beneath your chest,
and the slow surrender
of my body
against yours,
as though the earth
had opened
some ancient chamber
and let me enter.
There was no yesterday.
No tomorrow.
Only the moon
and the water,
the salt upon our skin,
the breath
we shared
with the night.
But even the oldest tides
must turn.
The eastern sky
began to pale.
The moon withdrew
from the waters.
And you—
you loosened
into the mist,
your warmth
taken by the wind,
your shape
unmade
by the rising light.
I woke
to the cold
of an empty bed,
my hand
still reaching
for what was no longer there.
A beautiful phantasm—
born of the night,
shaped by the elements,
gone with the dawn.
Yet somewhere
beneath the waking earth,
the waters still move
towards a shore
they have never touched.