She laid the flowers on his grave today
before the thundering rains arrived to match her cries
ringing through the valley and a deluge of grief
washed all that came before away. Yesterday, the day
she buried him, something died in her forever; yet,
wherever life will lead her as it surely will—
and just as surely as she will follow still,
he is raised to life and runs free in her heart.
And her heart will yet survive where her ravaged
mind and savaged body may not. As does his,
which lives and beats and makes its home here:

This is the Love
that remains
and will not be buried but is set free:
butterfly being.

The day she was worried sick she could not
have imagined cruel twist of fate and metal, a devil's
snare or bargain, attempt to bribe or bait most beautiful
of souls—death unleashed like venom, spewed forth
like taste of the vomit in her mouth moments after
her body's rejection of rancid falsehood, at what
her eyes and his were forced to see, at what
we had all been forced to swallow, a myriad
of mirrored moments mashed up. Her sickness
at the death of innocents slaughtered or seized—
all who like him fell silent in a swoop. She too fell
in a heap and howled for hours when
he could not. Hear her now:

This is the Life
that rises
and does not sleep, a dream that never dies,
soothes her, stills her cries.

Thin threads, she thought, were all she had left,
having been again lowered into hell and her hold
on hope, already frayed, though fervently through 
six days and nights she prayed, pouring out petition
and blessing, calling on legions of angels, a light brigade
to cradle him, bring him home to her. The way the last
golden glow glimmered on the clouds that sunset
he was missing before she found him mangled, the way
the light traced the line of the tree where they had sat, 
dressed in life's finest hues just days before...
he spoke to her then, saying:

This is the Light
that shines
a rainbow through woven web of wonder,
hollowed, hallowed now.