This one lingering question 
starts with me every dawn–
darling, are you really gone?
Shall I hold these ‘maculate laughs 
you gave only in deep-wide longing?
Shall we no longer be?

You’d have my words long before I said,
you’d have my heart if e’eryone contested,
yet I’m grappling on to the thought of hope;
this still grey life saved from its hugging mope.

golden sunset haze o’er a day of 
great grey storm clouds and rain–
great yearning in vain, 
great fat thunder and white sky-scars 
quick to heal but what of mine?

The poetry is calling,
I wish it was you.
The words are rushing back
and my dusty drafts are being fetched
from their once holding shadows;
will our love ever know such salvation?

Morning starts to shine and thawing can be felt.
Healing from the gnawing ache of human isolation 
is forthcoming but what of you and what of us?

In your seen and felt absence I had to know–
why I’d ever again bother to write or sow.
You were the good gift after the strife,
the promised land and hopeful wife,
but the gone is all I have left of you.

An undying hope,
fervent wordless prayers,
the spaces you’d fill,
a shadowing soul and it’s 
brilliant bright white heart.

I’ll always be looking for you
and my poetry will speak of us—
Florence.


~ Mona Lisa, 
by Ndoro.