The Greatest Love

The Greatest Love
By Muriel Palanca

I’ll lay the sky down before her feet in stars of brightest gold.
I saw her tears of diamonds as they froze in bitter cold.
For once I had the rarest rose that was ever brought to bloom.
Then winter took my love from me and my flower died too soon.
Her coffin never saw the light for fear she’d burn away.
I never saw the sun again. In her darkness I chose to stay.
With her I sealed a promise I swore I would never break.
Her reckoning was on my neck but I’d give her all she’d take.
My days felt like eternity but with her, a second past.
With every breath I loved her more and I would until my last.
At night I knew what rapture was because I found it in her eyes.
It went beyond sweet ecstasy and the whispers of her sighs.
I felt her heat consuming me like the bloodlust in our veins.
She scored my flesh and I was hers but I surrendered all the same.
She took my soul and gave it wings from a hell we both shared.
To be with her was paradise and heaven would never compare.
I’d lie awake and watch her sleep because her face was so at peace.
I forgot the world was cruel outside because this angel made me believe.
I knew I was falling faster into something greater than my control.
For deep inside my emptiness, she was there to make me whole.
I remember on that tragic night when I woke to find her gone.
It’s still so hard to say the words for the sight I came upon.
In the forest I saw a fire burning to a midnight sky.
I heard her scream in agony and my name was her final cry.
I saw them laugh as she turned to ash and my heart was filled with hate.
All for them and for myself because I knew I’d come too late.
I played those scenes over again. First I’d pause and then rewind.
Every night, I wake and run. It’s me who saves her every time.
A thousand ways, all different, I somehow pull through for her.
And all of this is just a dream. Things will be just as they were.
But this is real, this place I’m in; a shuttered house except for me.
Decaying all my memories until my broken heart won’t beat.
Her loneliness and my defeat somehow brought us both together,
But deep inside I think I knew with her I’d spend forever.
So here I stand upon her grave where all things come to end.
There’s nothing left to hold me back so I’ll die to live again.
And you can search in all the world or until the end of time
For there never was or ever will be a greater love than mine.