When after months of wishing and waiting

we smiled over coffee,

something — for once — clicked properly in the universe.

Tumblers fell into all the right places;

a door slipped slightly open.

When we walked together, hand in hand, from Siglap that afternoon,

trees leaned together in an arch over us;

leaves sprinkled themselves, like rice and flowers,

on the pavement underneath our feet.

It was like the wedding we would never have.

The sunlight and the breeze were our witnesses.

We took every step just a little bit slower

to stay together longer.

Just a tiny superstition. A charm which failed.

But the door we’d opened somehow stayed ajar

for another nine years. Sirius’ light

falls on me now, old light, out of the past,

as I find myself again on that same road.

Above and around me the same trees

have bowed their heads in silence.

Our time, at last, is ended. The door is closed.

But the starlight doesn’t know this. It still sends only

the blessing of the heavens, a message of congratulation

arriving nine years late. Too late. But even so

I reach into the space inside my chest,

into the tin heart there, and place

this final belated message from the stars

alongside a photograph of you, still bright,

a photograph, kept from the days of radiance,

when all we thought would lie ahead

was happiness —

and when the future, falling back towards us,

felt almost like a memory of bliss.

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