When you came to Rome the first time
and found me writing by candlelight, you 
and I talked forever about
my stack of books and all the stories I
would try to write. 

But time swept away the stories
and you were swept up in a story, too,
and we lost everything before
I had the chance to give you true story
of our great love.

On the desk in your room here: stack
of books, all of them familiar to me,
like you, a man larger than life, the one
I knew I came to find again,
lost already.

Foreshadowed grief saw me standing
months later in the hall, where you balanced
stack of books on one hand, staring
through me again when I said I did not
see, understand.

For many years I sat alone
sans speech or emotion, burying self
in a stack of books, seeking to 
remember, remember what you forgot
and I could not. 

Then, another decade gone, I
rose from yet another shipwreck night, spent,
began to write and paint and try
to go on. So here I sit surrounded
by stacks of books.

It means so little without you,
All I can think is what I cannot do
alone and how time is slipping
and all the stacks of books we've yet to write
with our great love.