What was growing inside me
was golden fire
spreading slowly through branches of veins
renewing every sinew with flame
bringing a fury and a beauty to my eyes,
my heart a furnace,
alive.

I go through now, slowly, daily,
cutting charred and dead branches
trying to salvage
hoping that somewhere
something still grows,
still glows.

Unthinking,
I tend to see myself as Uriah
but I am no Uriah.
Often I am in the cave with David,
or I am in the lowly crowd, looking on with envy
as Solomon and Sheba climb marble steps
a thousand worlds above me.

Sometimes I meet your friends
and they flirt with me.
They don't know,
you keep it secret
or insignificant.
They don't know
you are now a thousand worlds above me.

A young girl plays around me,
and so many chase after her body,
her energy.
She asks about you jealously,
not used to playing in the shadows.
She fears, somehow, we are not done.
She sees the flickering, now and then,
in dark, tired eyes.

I have dreamed of you too many times.
I have recalled you
so wide eyed,
hanging on my every word.
And I have remembered you
turning cold,
your eyes narrow,
walking away as I burned and was consumed
entirely.

Your friends sometimes message me
mistakenly
because you have kept it secret
perhaps in cowardice
or perhaps in hope
or perhaps, I don't know...
It is as though
we are both widowed
now ghosts to one another
striving on,
on two sides of the same world
perhaps in cowardice,
or perhaps in hope,
or perhaps...
I don't know.

But what was growing inside me
has over grown.