Wearing her perfume

Is like donning Freya’s falcon coat –

A sacred ritual,

A thing not in the realm of mortal men,

An act of not-quite blasphemy

Akin to turning back the hourglass of life

One fraction of an instant –

Yet, I count the cost.

Pale Death doubtless keeps a tally

Of moments such as these,

Marking with his heavy quill

Each second I borrow from him,

For Surely these stolen moments

Of desiderium for a dream long lost,

Of a kind of twilight haze that settles over one

Only in the aftermath,

When all that is left of her is silence,

Surely, for this, and more, I count the cost.

For these moments, surely

I sacrifice myself to myself,

Hanging upon the world tree impaled by my own blade,

Surely, a debt accrued must one day be paid,

Surely,

For every moment of tender joy and ardent longing

I hoard in the bitter month of October,

Surely, I pay, one day in the middle

Of an otherwise blissful May.