Sometimes I think about the impassable distance between us. I would weep a little if I weren't so tired and numb. I would brave the savage wolves again, face the gargoyles and the creatures that rip human flesh apart to feed just to see your sweet face again, if I knew how to find you if I knew you lived still I wonder if you miss me like I miss you and whether you knew in that tragic instant we parted torn away from each other in violence and fear and desperation that it would hurt like this to takes sides What we did, we had to do. You, to cling to family the safety of clan; me to flee, return to my mountains where I belong, where the owl and the fox know my step and the sounds of my tongue finds reckoning I sometimes think of the mad rush of my escape of the trains where I slept, hiding under benches breathing so low I could suffocate - to remain undetected trembling every moment, suspecting something out there would hear me I think of those days... running, so fast through forbidding valleys, wading across marshes never stopping for breath, not a moment of rest with the complete determination it took to reach the safety of those majestic mountains I remember thinking how you never would have made it and we'd both have perished; I wonder now how I ever found the strength to run so far and fast I made it, back to my lands, to my shorelines to the shade of my ancient forests where creatures' hearts beat at the rate intended who hunt without malice or evil in their souls We shall never meet again a fact I don't know how to accept I shall never know if you married, or hide in some cave alone, hungry and terrified, or if you even survived that fateful night your village was attacked when the gargoyles descended black as night silent as snow and the red eyes of wolves streamed in through the cracks of your embattled fortifications a gleaming river of horror in the dark It has been years, but i carry you each day in my heart I pray to my gods; for there's nothing else to be done Only to be felt [21-III-2010]