We met where steeples cleave the dusk,
Where incense hung like amber dust,
And silence learned to call love just.

Your hand was flame against my palm.
The world grew distant, pale, and calm.
A song undone became our psalm.

The apple shone with darker shine,
Pressed from a grief more old than time
We ate, and knew the eating fine.

The kiss was slow. The stars withdrew.
The firmament forgot its truth.
Creation held its breath and knew

Your mouth: a flame half-understood.
My ribs: a chapel built of wood.
We burned exactly as we should.

Our bodies knelt, though not by choice.
The angels lost their leading voice.
The void enjoined us to rejoice.

The final bell remained unswung.
The Mass was said, but never sung.
The end began where beginning stung.

The constellations broke their schemes,
Their patterns lost to ruined themes,
And heaven shuddered in its dreams.

The planets faltered in their spin.
The ordered dance grew paper-thin
We watched the turning fold within.

The galaxies drew closed their gate.
No brightness left to consecrate
A hush consumed the vast estate.

Time loosened all it thought it knew.
Its moments dimmed from gold to blue
It knelt, and then it knelt anew.

The void remembered its first breath.
Its cradle-silence, prior to death
A hymnal made of nothingness.

Yet through that dark, our vow remained.
No star endured, no law sustained
But still, our ruin was ordained.

We held each other past the fall.
The end of form, of space, of all
Love outlasts what is cardinal.

No shape remained to speak our name.
No voice recalled from whence we came.
One hunger burned. It was the flame.