Night Rending

She believes he is asleep
at her side – but he silent lies
to watch a moonbeam paint her hair
and to eavesdrop as she weeps.

A single crystalline tear
he spies, perched atop her raised cheek
like a secret cast in quicksilver.
Then a sniffle, never meant to reach his ear.

Shadows ooze along the wall
like molasses. He smells the brine
of meekness under brazen sun –
deciphers her heart’s encrypted call.

Two souls the thick night somehow cleaves,
one with back turned to hoard its sundry
wounds, one helpless to breach the divide.
Death claps at the window in dry oak leaves.

A tortured mind begs wordlessly for grace
to right what it never knew was wrong
with love. He turns to sleep, dreams stained
by a moonlit tear upon a stranger’s face.