So weak is the mind
That the heart feels drained
Evaporating love in respire
Pretending inviolate love
Has a place here
Ascension of the soul
Negated by nocturnal verbosity
Insipid words of discontent
Exacerbated by the irrationality of emotion

Lovely words meant for another
A heart alone again
Shadowed by the bright reflection
Of your love for her instead
Romantic notions mused by her
In words meant once for me
Now, my eyes steal glances
Of a love I never meant to see
And so I wish you worlds of joy
A lifetime of togetherness in love
Truth be told, I mean each word
As it's you I'm thinking of
So I read all your romantic notions
Of your love for her instead
As I sit here in the darkness
A heart alone...again

Visions of a backlit childhood
Of golden-haired halos and shadowed eyes
Slideshow in flashes of painful yesterdays
For those still unfamiliar
Longing to hold the child as he cries
Those tears cannot fall in confusion's void
And fear darkens all roads 'can be seen
Still here, in their nightmare,
Like it was my own
Is a truth told in smiles and jellybeans
Long since gone away

A worst-case-scenario mentality
Breeds emotional nightmares of what-ifs
Methodically feeling the pain in each possibility
Preparing for Hell, knowing it is impractical, improbable, and unkind
Each reaction gauged
Smiles erupt in each better choice
A familiar road traveled often
Lead only by a history of pain
It ebbs and flows, bobs and weaves at will
This reality is organized, easy to understand

Random thought of an unlikely, unfathomable future
Vivid like a film
Unwavering, persistent
There is no controlling its outcome
Forced to watch the images forged in a broken mind
Tears burn flesh and a naked heart bleeds
Stop rolling, just...stop
No amount of pleading slows the images
The pain is overwhelming
Far beyond self-inflicted, torturous, methodical thoughts
Uncontrollable, inconsolable
True and real
So very real

There is but one way to stop that future
The one shown in visions of just deserts
The future that smolders through present joy
Preemptive pain is just not an option

I've seen the future my heart has built
The shards of a shattered soul
Offer no comfort

My worst-case-scenario was but a benign freckle on the elbow of a body invaded by metastatic melanoma

My shadows unite
As he remains out of sight
The night he walked home alone

My heart tosses and turns
For his safety I yearn
The night he walked home alone

For reasons unknown
His strength he has shown
The night he walked home alone

He is stronger than I
As I await his reply
The night he walked home alone

I wait for the phone
To signal he's arrived home
The night he walked home alone

Because if I don't mourn for them, who will?
No one will remember them
Soon thousands, millions of lives-
Poured through the hourglass
To be lost beneath the sands of eternity-
Forgotten forever

And no one even noticed