Oathroot

We met beneath the trees where no one goes,
The sky was low, the air was cold and wide.
No sound but wind that hummed through crooked rows,
You looked at me and showed the blade you’d hide.

No laughter then. We weren’t the kind to play.
You cut your palm and watched the red appear.
I did the same. The light had lost its way.
We pressed our hands and felt the silence near.

“Let only death divide this blood,” we said.
Our voices shook, but neither looked away.
The trees stood still. The earth beneath us bled.
We walked back out, but something did not stay.

Days passed. I packed. A taxi waited near.
The house grew small, the sky a foreign hue.
A gate, a seat, then clouds too sharp to steer,
I never knew the pact would still be true.

The plane touched down. A message lit the screen.
A crash. A turn. She’s gone, was all they wrote.
The hour was exact. The space between
my parting breath and death across your throat.

You didn’t choose. And yet you didn’t flee.
The vow we made had waited, still and wild.
You gave your life the moment I left me,
You kept the word we made when we were child.

They paved the woods. They tore the birch tree down.
No one remembers where we laid the vow.
But I still feel it pull beneath the town -
The cut we made still living in me now.

You were not mine. But you were made of me.
And something deeper claimed you when I flew.
The pact was real. It took what had to be.
And I am half. The rest went back with you.