Buckling tables under the weight of Grandma’s best bakes –

We gathered together, holding hands and laughter

“For God’s Sake, Ralph, could you make it any shorter?!”

Her loving scolding of Grandpa’s rushed prayer after.

I can still hear our hushed laughs, feel fingers intertwined –

The times taken for granted I pray to return to see.

Can I go back, laugh one more time,

Before the thief in the night stole you away from me?

He came in the quiet when we were safe in embrace –

He stole the laughter and broke voices to cries –

He fled with your light, placed you amongst his other stars

And back to thieving he flew to rip his next prize.

But not before I last caught your fading eyes –

The eyes that used to comfort now belonged to him.

What were you seeing? Was it me? Was it nothing?

Or did you see the breaking world at its end?

The thief was insatiable, a shrouded seeping hunger –

Feasting on peace, washed down with blood –

Made us scared to touch. We were forced alone,

But to survive apart only meant that we loved.

So many tables stopped laughing that night –

Too many cries over lies of a remedy.

How many homes forever torn by the thief

Now must settle for a memory?

The thief crept into our lives and loves.

He stole our light, forever frozen above.

And I like the stolen now must wait

To reune a constellation together made of.