Tether

Untether me from this shadow
Where you’ve pinned me, like a photographed smile
To the heels of your ghost.

Sink down, sink down, echo of our past
Fetched up from below the waters
Adrift, turned on its pale belly.

Let the dead remain dead, my love.
I have mourned you.
Stay buried beneath these stratas
These layers built to hold your ghost at bay.

Too sudden. Too soon.
In my heart, you have never left.

I am tethered to you by an umbilical cord.
Cut me loose, my love.
Let me live.
Recede into the distance beyond our grief.
You will not be forgotten, for love
Remembers all but softens the edge of departure -
The ache of our pain.