If I Were a Poet

Through the winter, long and impossible,
we sang in the saddest key.
You, almost transparent under a blood-stained sheet,
I beside you,
and the sun fading redder as the horizon rose to swallow it.

After forever when summer returned,
we no longer had shadows,
for they had been absorbed by the moonless night.
Now when we sing, it is a triad stripped of its center note,
neither major nor minor.
We stand where sorrow and joy meet,
but it is enough to know that we stand.