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The sky is gone, and the waters roll and rise.
I watch the stars fall,
having lost their place and purpose.
A million silver cinders of light,
raining down upon a water and a world of black.
I watch each drop,
each icy ember,
collide with waves of dark, and melt away into the rippling nothing.

The sea has swallowed the sky.

My lungs are filled with the horror of a world without light or solid ground.
Screams churn in my stomach and rise to my chest,
racing for the surface of my thinning breath.
But the cries have drowned
before they are rescued by my lips.
All I have are whispers,
the ghosts of words that used to be.

The sea has swallowed me.

Where are you,
now that the stars and all their songs have ceased,
now that the deep silence has silenced me?
I taste the gall of bitter waiting
and whither under waves of softly spoken fears.
My eyes search a grave,
where the horizon used to be,
before the sky had vanished,
where the morning I used to see.

But are those footsteps falling on the water?
Does even the night obey your word?
Does even silence speak your name,
and even the nothing, stir, when you are heard?
Are those footsteps falling on the water?
Is that music in the dark?
Do even rushing waters cry your glory
and breaking waves declare who you are?
Are those footsteps falling on the water?

Or has the sea swallowed thee?
It will all fade, it must, I must.
And when I have fought and screamed and hoped,
when I've finally drowned deep in daylight,
then my reluctant goodbyes will sound the depths
and I will count the days and all their quiet deaths.

I miss you, whoever you are
and whoever I thought you to be.
Perhaps all I ever heard were echoes of words
or all I ever saw was a ripple in the water,
but I will miss these even so.

Let go, just let go.
Light, beautiful and frail;
I taste upon my lips the quiet hints of morning light,
and as fire breaks upon the bow of my world,
the deep blue of midnight finds refuge in my memories.
I will always remember you, with your eyes like ice in drops of fire.
I have tried to find a way to pull this world from the way it clings to you
to somehow cure it from all the color of your eyes.
But you are the deep blue of midnight
in which the stars swim and light the rippling dark.
You are the music fading in the halls
like every dryad footstep fall.
You live, for better or for worse
in the slivered silver glints of rain.

In all my attempts to rip you out
I simply find you there again.
The muscles in my forearm ache, my fingers curl and grip the hilt
the weight of cold steel pulls at my grasp,
and I clutch, and hold my breath, to bare the weight of another world.
Here in the sharp edges of a glint and a silver shard of light
I lay hold of a small piece of myself that wains and faints but will never fade.
Who can see me now, when I can barely see me now?

Then there is the fire, the crackling dance of coals a midst the flicker and flight
of glowing cinders rising in the dark.
Smoke, the smell of it, the taste of it, fills the warmth around me;
my shelter from the ice of not yet, my guard against the cold of twilight.  
A wind blows and laced with the howling, I catch hints of spring.
I knew my self in the spring once, I was known in the spring once.

Where are you?
Can you be known here in the wood between the worlds?
Do you even exist in twilight?
Do I even exist in the twilight?
Where are you?
All my short and stubborn days,
I've looked to you
After every angry violent burst
I've looked to you

And when I wandered and I ran
far across the fragile edges of my pride
when I lost all glint of light
all taste and trust for hope

I have looked to you

And now I am here, once more
far from all I understand
And I beg for tears flow
to feel the violent grace
of your heavy hand

And I am looking to you

And you are quiet as you always are
silent as the grave....
But graves have spoken once before
long ago on that third morning bright

And I
I am still looking to you
and hoping, and afraid
of what it is that you will do
I am pulled to pieces by the gnawing hope for day
while the silent grip of twilight begs my flesh to stay
and while the brief moments of sweet sanity
afford me clarity and calm,
in the soundness of my mind
I still cannot see the dawn.

What is left of my desire, those portions I still own,
is fading fast, and waning first
is the hope I had for home.
But wretched man that I am
I am as stubborn still
so even here as I resign
I still await thy will
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