Go read the sign by the bookstore door
she said, sensing the need in my sweet push
where, chiseled into a buried rock
Nothing is written in stone it read.
Shadows of bushes swept the words
as if to rub them off the sun
and no one, given half a chance, could argue
the cold stone's circumstance, its place
in the steps of the coming and went,
darker than those steps were meant.
The shadows we yearn to know
and let the days of sadness go,
get what's eternal sorted out,
to put a new line under foot:
You once were his, but you could be mine.