There was this grief of a
Permanent kind
Etched upon her face –
Light playing shadows
Christened, “Solitude,”
And a dark that’d dance before
The grace of those long gone.

And so, he’d grabbed her hand,
Nudged her cheek with a
Nose broken crooked,
Tender was the trust bent her back
And failed was the promise
As “tomorrow,” never was;
It’d never ever be.

Sure, tomorrow, the day after
And tomorrow once more
Happens for others,
But one more year, for her,
Would be carved upon brow
Come one more drink,
One kiss and the other, dead.

That door’d been destined to slam
And soon it did with tear drops
Abandoning the never delicate face;
Eyes like a reservoir missing fish,
Pupils with paddies depleted rice,
And once again, but one, “tomorrow,”
Shy an hour or twenty.

Crippled, she’d carried, crippled
And carried on, All the way
And with only pennies to show
With a back bent epochs and
Crooked to bury crook; Under dirt,
Under home and alongside
The love she’d never lost for him.