It was yours. But

You didn’t know how the cottonwoods sounded like the ocean when the wind blew through their leaves
Or how hay turned to crystal once covered in ice.
You didn’t know each bend in the river like we did
Or count the trees alongside it.

You didn’t spend summer nights memorizing the sky
Or autumn mornings gathering berries
Or spring days counting puddles.

You never sang with the wind on a winter’s night.

Yet, somehow, it was yours and not ours.

Until it wasn’t yours, either.

And we,
Who had bled into the earth
Who had tasted the rain
Who had listened to the trees
Were abandoned to the rest.

The rest we didn’t know,
The rest without history.

And yet
Somehow
Now it belongs only to us.
Forever ours
As it could never
Be yours.