her silhouette will be so holy against the windowpane

the outline of something otherworldly, twisting in time to a song you will not be able to hear

you will tell her she reminds you of a meadow at dusk—

she will not know what this means.

it will mean that you love her best in shadow.

her fingertips will graze your bare skin in the dark

and each red-eye flight taking off above the apartment

will mask the sound of your grief tangled in the sheets;

you know she will never be able to love a fragment of a person

and that is all you have to offer.

so you will keep hands clasped on the precipice of extraordinary,

face upturned in quiet reverence,

hoping desperately into the silence

that she does not find that cracked-open truth,

buried in the broken glass bottles on the floor.

because she will be the only bold move you will ever make

and her sunflower grin

leaving light striped across the walls of your bedroom

will be reward enough to make losing her

losing yourself, too.

and when you lose her, as you inevitably will

she will scream at you without a sound

that she has always been a tiger without teeth,

that she loves you,

but she doesn't know what this means.

and when her body, the outline of something otherworldly,

tears through the air without hollow bones

and she takes her last bow on the sidewalk

your applause will break through the tongue-tied silence

because she will have been magnificent.