My sunlight flees around these withered walls. My starlight glints no longer through the leaves. The water through my fading fingers falls. The shadow in the corner sobs and grieves. The tether round my heart has been untied And from it floats away a white balloon. The sea stagnates in absence of the tide: Held still by silent mourning of the moon. The whisperings of memories and dreams Like ghosts are tugging coldly at my hand. Theyβre picking at my bones like ruptured seams And crumbling my castle into sand. She is a thing of beauty whom I love Together weβll be lightning from above.
In the novel I am writing, the protagonist's father, Oliver, writes many poems for his wife, Svetlana, but he never writes her a sonnet, despite promising he will. She dies in childbirth before he has a chance to write her one, so he writes this.