I raised you up from the earth. A rock upon a pedestal. A granite shelf. A stone counter-top, marbled like a harmony in counter-point. And rise you did, like a highland cliff, above the edge of the world. (The world we once knew and loved.) There you stood, Gallant before all storms. Impervious to the lure of Aeolian rifts. A steady face that could face the effervescent shore. You were so perfect, -ly what I had in mind. A transcendental Beauty knocking upon the threshold of forever. An incarnation from the realm of forms. But then, in an instant, the incantation ceased. The spell ended and soon you were rended into spall. As Heaven cried, the fragments coalesced, and that which was viscous, moved as if vicious. The residue of your Memory, sticky sweet like molasses, revealed its bitter tinge, and soon melted down the steep descent, where I was caught in the resin of an enveloped seal, as if I were set in an envelope sealed. Buried under the blankets of your alluvial silt, I became the figurine, a votive offer, the sole witness to our prehistoric tryst. A bygone relic — by which I mean, a remnant of a world that no longer is. And you? You became a crevice. No, a crevasse. The vast space in between. The gap within the canyon. The omission within the canon. The Apostle turned Apostate. A defector to the Cause, and its Effect? The missing link between who I was and who I am. The omnipresent absence. You disappeared. And so too, I followed.