Roses and Ash

You bought me the teapot from a car boot sale
and we laughed at how strange a gift it was, together.

The wood was beautiful, rosewood with gold carvings
twining around the handle & spout,
and you admitted that you had wanted it the second you saw it.
Rather the way I felt about you.

We kept it on the mantlepiece in our bedroom,
as a treasure too valuable to use.
I could see it when we lay together at night.

It became linked to my lust, my love for you.

The deep reds and browns weave in and out of my mind
as I remember the years we spent together.
Every moment in those memories, every high ecstatic point
lies against a backdrop of rosewood and gold.

In later years, as we grew older,
our lives slowed down.
But still those memories kept on being formed.

Feelings don't die that easily.

When you died I chose cremation
and watched your body crumble through tear-filled eyes.
I could still feel your hands on my skin, your lips on mine;
the way they were for all our years.

They gave me the ashes in an urn,
far too ugly to contain the body of a man I loved so fiercely.

Now you lie inside the rosewood teapot
which contains so many memories.
So much love, so much lust.

An apt ending to a life entwined.