You and Your Damned Breath

We dreamed of you.
You breathed. Not dead,
But not a soul
Since you’d lost us.

You were a shape
Curled at a desk.
We were your shade
As you wrote us,

And as you wrote
You lost us, lost
Hope of a place,
Faith that a place

Both soul and shade
Could be, could stay.
And so we left
You with your breath.