The house, when empty,
feels like a moseleum.
Everything is dark.
It is strange, how literally I can feel the heart tear.
Pericardium and myocardium,
ripping with the slow, tough **** of time and waiting,
atrium and ventricle split.
Far away my brain turns in on itself
as I stare at the candy on the road,
left from a Christmas parade,
Defined by the things its left behind,
though they lie unwanted.

My soul has fled to the wilderness
birth pangs of grief beginning,
prepared to deliver a stillborn heart,
As another star falls out of my sky.

It will go dark, I know.
One by one fall, without wishes to bring them back.
I stare at my sister's golden hair
and dread the day when she will be the one lying white,
bloodless
in a hospital bed.
Oh my mother, Oh my father,
are you to fall away, too?

Light. I scream, I need light.
But I will not throw bits of glass at the sky
to pretend I have re-lit the stars.

It is night. We are sitting on the steps among fallen leaves, looking out into an eerily empty scene. Pale blue light shines on the weathered concrete where a single white car is parked in a forgotten spot. It's strange without people, the bustle, constant hum of voices, engines, the occasional horn.
     It feels more alive to me now. The place in and of itself alive-- as it would have been if man had never existed. If our existence had been lost somewhere up among the few stars that now dare to shine through. Those few (happy few?) who dare to look upon the tragic, transient, mortal beauty of men.
     The familiar symphony of night sounds can be heard in the little line of trees before us. The wind is plucking leaves from branches. They fall brown and lifeless at our feet. I wonder if trees miss their leaves, or if, perhaps, they have accepted the perpetual cycle of loss and renewal mankind has yet to make peace with.  Each year shorter than the last, each day longer than the first. I have always loved the melancholy of autumn, its bittersweet solitude, the leaves as quiet reminders of  mortality-- tiny deaths to foreshadow our own. No, I do not wish for death. I have, but not tonight. Tonight the air is soft and cool, and the air and sky are clear. I am finding peace in the mundane chaos.
     He is next to me, thinking. Solemn, with a tinge of sadness, but for what I'm never sure. He laments the loss of our child-like wonder, and I question if it can be regained. I would like to think so. I think somewhere, inside all of us, our childish hearts remain, molten core of memory, identity, the first, the fairest of us. Who we were before the world beat it out of us.
He has a soft, deep, murmur of a voice. A tiny gap between his two front teeth I notice when he laughs. A lovely laugh that shakes through his willowy, wiry frame. His eyes are kind and thoughtful, yet serious. When he looks at me, it feels as though he is trying to stare right through, and I turn away. For all my wanting to be known, perhaps I am not ready--yet. But parts of my spirit which have long lain dormant are surfacing again, coming towards the light. Timid, they step out, unsure of where they are, what the footing is here. But so far, solid.