Kiss with Blue Bottle

When the end came you said
you were the one who’d loved more,
said it as if you hadn't known,

yet the autumn before,
pink sky sinking
towards year’s end,

you worked fingers into the muck
below the boardwalk
to wrestle out

the glint you saw
where dwindling rays
struck blue—

cobalt bottle, thick, embossed,
that held once some elixir of hope
from another century.

You turned it, rinsed it
where the tide slid back,
pulled me into its inky gleam

to kiss, all indigo. You kept
the bottle for your own,
set it in a window

to hold and focus light
outlasting what I could—
and could not—give.