Sometimes, I still wander up to the attic.

Once devoid of purpose, I find that it now acts as a trove,

providing some temporary sanctuary from my gale.

I convince myself that the walls can sense my own fleeting presence.

They know I won't be back for a while.

They tolerate my evanescence as I begrudge them their captives.

Revisiting - never to retrieve, but to deposit just one more thing.

I am sure I elicit some suffocating fear  

of being unearthed again (and again).

I am more than half-tempted to make a break for the door  

as if I were the coward responsible for the deposition of every hunk  

of life or death that now form the walkways in this room.

But then, this is not the maze - I know and I have known.

I am the only labyrinth here, yielding no trace of a thoroughfare.  

I am left smacking into walls more menacing

than the one I will continue to stare through.

Corner after corner after corner,

each its very own long-dead end.