While you lie sleeping, I inhale your breath
And trace my hand elusively on yours.
The night, as inescapable as death,
Engenders every fear the heart deplores.
For once you were the strong and supple tree
And I the budding sweetly-scented graft.
We bound ourselves together faithfully
And bore the fruit of this most tender craft.
Throughout the years we’ve weathered as the boughs
That battle wind and thunderstorm and drought.
No roots could anchor firmer than our vows
Though in the end all human flesh gives out.
Two lives conjoined so perfectly as one
Not even death can surely bring undone.
(First Prize Poetry, Scribblers Literary Competition 2012)