For Elayne

She will shatter.

She will break.

She will disintegrate

pieces of dust, clay and cloud.

Some say she lives in the petals of flowers, that bees carry her fragrance in their hairs.

I say she is the wonder of a waterpool’s reflection, 

dancing in a Texas midnight, moonlit sky.

I saw that people were her gardens on the earth, I felt her shower us with care.

We look to the grass that clasps the sky, the rising sun.

We feel those curling, morning vines, the tender blossoms that she touched, the drops from the watering cans that fall back to us from infinity.

What was it that called her to listen?

To sip in all that suffering?

How did she snuggle in so perfect?

How many times did she bestow the gift of rest,

a shift in the joints rubbed raw with a hate we thought we could not escape?

The places we all ran from, she ran straight into,

into the thunder, into the hail thumping on hearts.

She rode into the dustbowls, straight into our thirst for relief and rain.

Is it any wonder that she feared to stop the care she was so great at raining down?

(like cherry blossoms in a spring wind,

    like confetti from the canons of a broken heart)

She will visit us in the hot summer wind.

She will remind us:

   Our sweat and the tears drop down to feed that ground

that holds our paws and feet,

      clasps in love the roots of all the little wildflowers

that she waited for each spring.

Elayne: I too feared your disintegration.

I too wish the world could count your kindness, carried in your arms like a perfect newborn.

What will we do without the certainty of your gaze upon the most plaintive portrait, the saddest symphony?

Can we reflect that courage in a looking glass, will we know how to step through when the time sighs right?

Nothing is enough to say what I want to say about Elayne.

Perhaps it is best to sit and spin the silence, with strangers finally known.

Perhaps, because she would have wanted it,

for once, I will not feel alone in silence and sadness.

For once, I promise, Elayne, I will try and be

your kind of brave.

—Emily Romano