Never Want To Lose Your Face

I never ever want to lose your face
Though morning steals you from my sleep
Each night you visit, whole and near
Your warmth so real I forget to weep

In dreams we're still who we became,
That woven cloth, that single breath
Your touch still ripples through my chest
Your hand still knows its place in mine

But dawn's cruel kindness wakes me soft
Three seconds, maybe four, of peace
Before remembering empties out my arms
Before your face dissolves like mist

I try to hold the feeling close,
That fleeting grace of you still here
But day demands its harsh bright truth:

Yet something lingers past the dream
A warmth that grief cannot erase
As if your love left fingerprints
On parts of me I cannot reach

Seventeen years of "being" love
Not "saying" it but breathing it
How does that just disappear?
Where does that much loving go?

Perhaps it lives between the worlds,
Not here, not gone, but softly waiting
In that brief bridge from sleep to wake
Where I never have to lose your face

So I'll meet you there each night, my love
In that country past all separation
Where time has no authority
And morning cannot steal what's ours

For now, I practice this:
Letting go each dawn
Receiving you each night
Learning love's hardest lesson,
That holding on and letting go
Are both just forms of loving
That your face I'll never lose
Lives deeper than my reaching

When Grace that wove us once before
Weaves through the veil between us
I'll find your face not lost but waiting
Where love has always seen us.