Afterthought

At a cafe by the moonlight,
Art was a witness when
She crossed the invisible line
and held your arm for a time,
She read her thoughts on the crumpled pieces of paper:
Her feeble attempt to put the puzzle together.

You sipped your Irini and listened quietly,
as she heard the voice of reason in her head:
"The affair has ended;
Nothing lies ahead."

You may never feel her soft, sun-kissed skin again,
Nor she the blister on your right palm from working in the garden.
She may never come this close to you once more
To notice two pox marks above your lips,
Yet she will always remember the melancholy in your eyes
As she said "I love you" for the last time.

Will you remember the photographs you looked at:
the old woman with a contoured face,
the sunsets on the beaches of Boracay,
the view from the top of the mountains of Sagada,
the cat that was never there at dawn,
while the moon was looking on...

Will you remember all of them?
Maybe not, but it does not matter.

Was all that was to be understood between them,
After all that had came to pass
And all that was unsaid remained
A trove of secret longings in their hearts,
Have come to a reckoning beyond their imagining?

As they walked across the expanse of the atrium,
What forces of nature caused the two pilgrims
To refuse to look at each other’s eyes,
To deny their hands' needless longing to touch?
They were afraid of their own powerlessness
to Passion's last plea for redemption.

I wish my faith is stronger than my reason.
Yet how could I believe in Passion or Devotion?
Will anyone ever understand that the distance
between two souls who loved each other
Deeper than the abyss of their cheating hearts
is, but, an illusion?