She sits on the bed and reads me
Old poetry
About ******, sadness, and loss
All synonyms
For the same affliction really
Dysfunction and despair
Captured in yellowed archival snapshots
Of a girl
With a penchant for surviving pain

Mortality leaps
From the prose as she reviews her life
In hellish imagery
A transmutation of spirit occurs
Within her
As she drifts through the years
On each page
Melancholy awareness for us both realizing
That it's all real

No one can take away the scars that
Every word cuts
No one can deny the inviolable fortitude
Required to document
The war embedded and entrenched on the front lines
Just old poetry
To me they resonate like a distant bell
Her sudden silence
Whispers that the dead still scream her name