In Velvet

The moon

spends

every night

borrowing

someone else’s light.

It never

calls itits own.

Only we do.

The mountain

never claims

the snow.

It simply

wears it

for a while.

Every spring,

the trees

receive

their leaves.

Every autumn,

they give

them back.

They hold them

through sunlight,

storm,

and summer,

then loosen

their grip

when the season

asks.

Love

wasn’t

something

I lost.

It was

something

I was trusted

with

for a while.

We were not

Evergreen.

But that doesn’t mean

we were any less

arboreal.

We grew

toward each other.

Made shelter

where there had been

only open air.

It took me

too long

to understand:

temporary

is not the opposite

of true.

Some trees

lose everything,

but that doesn’t

make them

any less

trees.

The timber

cut into lumber,

the lumber

shaped into furniture,

was always

a tree first.

Even when

we change form,

we remain

made of

what we once were.

Nothing in nature

mistakes

borrowing

for belonging.

Nature

knows

how to hold.

Humans

keep trying

to keep.

Maybe

I never owned

you either.

Maybe love

was never meant

to prove itself

through permanence.

Maybe

being given

something

beautiful

for a season

is not the same

as losing it

once winter comes.

Consider

the moose in velvet—

soft antlers

fed by blood.

When the growing is done,

it rubs the remains

of its tenderness

against the bark

until only the hardened thing

is left.

As though becoming 

requires the surrender

of everything

that once kept us soft.