Turn off the stars...

turn off the stars

darken every one

black out the moon

shut down the sun

you love me no longer

and I have no home

What's to be said? She worked. Hard. She wrote. She met friends, read books, travelled, meditated again and again on ' the still hour of the sea's withdrawal'... time, give it time. You love him, you see him, life goes on. On May 5th they wandered again in the silver birch wood, in dappled warm spring sun. In a shady bower under those softly swaying, graceful birch trees, they made love. Afterwards she held him closely, pressing him to her and drinking in the smell of him, the feel of him, as she watched the sparkling green of the high branches as they brushed across the luminous blue sky. A wonderful day together, even after everything. With his arms around her tightly her she knew there was nowhere she would rather be.This is why you are still here, she told herself. " Do you think one day you may love me again?" she asked.

"Maybe I can. I do hope so," he told her. He added that it would bring him great sorrow never to see her again, but he would understand if she couldn't go on. Soon after receiving her poem One Dark Hour, he had said how deeply moved he was by her words. How he had read it several times. Nearby was a rhododendron bush of soft purple flowers, and Coppelia picked one to keep.

This small, beautiful flower, her favourite colour, had watched over them making love, had been there when he held her under the silver birches. She would see hope in this one small thing. A sign her sorrow may pass, for ince hearing those words, 'I don't love you any more,' she felt she was drowning in sorrow, in regret. Words spoken to her so gently, and with eyes that - and she knew this was not wishful thinking - certainly were not eyes without the look of love. Or was it merely kindness?

Yet, she must live as one who loves, not one seeking to be loved. Her wonderful friends, she must love them, look after them. Stop thinking of your own suffering, Coppelia! Yet fighting her sadness was exhausting. For all was now so different. A space between them where once they had been so close. And all her own stupid fault! She had brought about the very thing she had feared. Her lack of trust had caused the fading ( she dare not really believe it had totally gone...) of his love for her. In fearing loss of that love, she had chased it further away. How she hated what she had done!

Sometimes we can only take so much. After heartbreak has pounded us we can only respond to the next hurt with so much outward show of pain. No-one could have guessed how Coppelia was feeling: it was poured down deep, deep inside, in every cell, in every breath. It gripped her heart like an iron fist, squeezing against all her efforts to resist its power. In time, she told herself. In time you will feel better. In time he will draw close to you again.
In time you will feel fully alive once more. 'All passes...'

turn off the stars

darken every one

black out the moon

shut down the sun

you love me no longer

and I have no home