Running for cover as the stars came crashing down,
we sheltered beneath the tree as the universe crumbled.

Eternal love, we hoped,
would survive the ultimate destruction.

Past tense, the written crucible of fear,
where the outcome is not apparent.
Is it indicative of what has become?

Alas, I fear the end hasn’t quite happened yet.
Who knows, maybe the future finds a place
to allow us to nest in her bruised branches,
but we are not there yet, always in the present,
racing away from and racing towards the conditional perfect.

I still think of you,
the perfect you,
the you who could smile the worry
from the world.

I still need you,
the loving you,
the you who carried soothing words
in your mouth.

I still miss you,
the midnight you,
the you who could talk the stars
down from the sky.

I know you’re feeling so broken down,
so turn around, breathe in the soft air,
make dreams with the starry skies.

I know your head is somewhere else right now,
visiting another town, but just hold on,
I’ll be there in a little while.

I know you don’t feel yourself these days,
do what your heart says, lie supine with love
and hold hands with fate.

I know you’re swirling in the darkness,
sleeping with silence, enjoy the quiet,
and hear your soul singing.

I know you’ll feel better real soon,
you always do, keep your head up,
sunshine is never far away.

I know this blue you’re feeling right now,
it drags you down, it’s your choice to swim,
I will keep you on the surface.

Mythologies lost to unforgiving sand,
burying the stories of the dead.
Wherever they may rest their heads.

Do you really believe the words they wrote?
There’s nothing there in the twisted script,
between the lines eroded away.

What was your name, at once so familiar?
Not even an echo gives me a quiet rhyme.

I am neither your hero nor your villain;
I am the NPC with a bow and arrows
hunting the invisible.

Hallways stretching off into the heart
of a dark that shifts uncomfortably,
the low grumbling of a formless monster.

Without end, the horror of eternity
reaching for me with dragon’s claws.

How familiar this pain is these days;
how unfamiliar the solace of nights.
I will not battle the coming dark
while I still haunt day’s golden light.

It was not I who built the House,
it was the House who constructed me.

My heart
stopped
for the
briefest
moment,
when I saw
my future
in the
curve
of your
lips