The Scent of Jasmine and Ash

                   The Scent of Jasmine and Ash

      (a love remembered across lifetimes at Angkor Wat)

I was not born, I was remembered.

Pulled from fury.

My face shaped in the breath

before time,

where someone once spoke my name

and even the statues turned.

He did not remember me,

standing beneath the South Gate

where gods and demons still

drag time like rope

through the mouth of the world.

But I remembered him.

I walked barefoot

through the ruins of what were.

The dust rose like incense

around my ankles,

as if the earth was trying

to hold me still.

He had loved me here once,

called me light,

called me danger,

then vanished like a name

washed from stone.

I entered the chambers

where silence lives.

The walls did not speak,

but they opened.

A thousand faces carved in stone

looked away

as I stepped into the memory.

There was something in his gaze,

like a note from a forgotten song

still echoing in the body.

He didn’t know why

his hands reached for mine

but I did.

I have carried him

through centuries,

his many names

his many mouths

all of them

living in the hollow

beneath my ribs.

I forgave him

not as mercy

but as fire:

a temple lit

by what endures.

When he turned

and asked if he knew me,

I said only:

‘I remember you’.

I did not stay,

I never do.

My raven told me,

“The stones have already taken you in,

carving your name

where no one can ever erase it.”

And now,

the tiger watches from the shadows

as the wind moves like breath

against the skin of our past.

Poetry and Image© Gesso Cocteau