For years, you never left home without a watch
clasped tight around your wrist and, I know,
no one noticed the day you left it behind.

Now your wrist rests barren on white linen
beside mine while the cracked face collects dust
on your nightstand, shed

because you already knew
how much time you had left.
Your burden now is mine and I stitch

my veins together with a watch of my own
as I wait for yours to split before my eyes, for
the day you use your blood as paint

to taint my skies with crimson.
The hands' hollow ticking fills the silence of
tomorrow, counting each pulse

until you say goodbye for good this time.

Here the weary rest upon the shore to
admire this mountain lake, a mirror struck
by dusk. Now watch how water turns from friend

to foe, at night it mimics chasms deep
and wide in absence of the heavens’ light.
Shadows come to haunt the mind and wake the million

voices buried far beneath our consciousness.
You stray from dreams to lie awake and wait
for the patient plea; the void is calling

you home. I know I cannot keep you
from heeding the insistent pull, my friend,
so powerful the draw of Death’s own flute.

Take solace in the knowledge that, I hear it too.

a little darker and I grieve the sun’s radiance,
suffocated by the smoky skies
born of the inferno that now paints the horizon
of places we once called home and, in silence,

the heavens weep, the earth quakes
and my shoulders shake as the world collapses
under the weight of a single mistake.
Tears cascade down from above to sizzle and evaporate

before they can ever reach the pyre.
Helplessly, I bowed my head as you embraced the fire,
the blood escaped from your veins
now feed the flames

and I cannot help but to envy the charred, twisted skeleton
you left behind and remember the hesitant
echo        your heartbeat left in my chest
of yesterday.