Ernest, *you  are the embodiment
of every melancholic song,
playing in the rooms of aching souls
with broken hearts.

You are the dark sky
that the sun has abandoned;
the wrinkled and weathered body
that youth forgot.

Despondently, you sit,
Day-after-day,
in that beige, aged lounge chair--
(which just like you, has seen better days)
rising from the dead,
only to scowl
about the ways in which your body has
failed you.

"Six months to live."
"Six months to live."
"Six months to live."

Six months to live*
but you're already gone
and I
can’t
bring
you
back.

I have spent most of my twenties,
living out of suitcases and shacking up with
madmen.

A gypsy, on an eternal search
for four walls,
that smell of
fresh paint.
And a warm body--- to press against mine,
if only (and usually)
temporarily.

As the months pass by in my
fancy, new cage---
I become restless, stifled and stagnant.

I’m a like a leaf on a branch,
waiting to blow
aimlessly in the wind
and a footprint,
waiting to embed itself into the soil
of places
I haven’t yet walked.

I am a pair of eyes
waiting to penetrate their gaze,
onto the symmetrical features,
of foreign faces,
I haven’t yet seen.

I am a nomad,
who cannot grasp,
the conception of home.
All I know how to do
is pack my bags
and
          keep
                         moving.

In the aftermath of chaos,
the screams are replaced by a rich silence,
that permeates through the walls,
and circulates through rooms
you no longer dwell in.

Shattered glass strewn across the floors,
reflecting what little light comes through the window
and shimmering,
like diamonds.

Barren rooms and barren walls,
delicately stripped down the day that you
left me---
a poor girl,
rich
in
resentments.