As we sit, take our seats in the banquet hall,
everyone rushes to be the first to feast,
while we’re left choking on the past.
Does no one hear the wind,
wailing against the stained glass?
Silver goblets raised in mock celebration,
filled with the essence that I poured.
Gleeful toasts echo against fractured stone,
laughter filling the banquet hall.
Does no one see the blood,
dripping down these chains?
A little too late,
they finally look around.
The stained glass has cracked,
its stories bleeding out onto the marble floor.
The drapes now hang in tatters,
lace left ripped in shreds.
Is this what you wanted?
The desecration of this citadel?
As walls begin to tremble,
pillars groan under the weight of decay,
no one stays to help.
They run.
Feet that once stood in reverence
trample the sacred,
careless, unburdened.
But I remain.
Veins of frost cover the walls,
the ceiling yawns open, snuffing out the light,
and I cannot move.
Not as the glimmering chandeliers fall,
not as the stone gives way beneath me,
not as the ruins cave in.
As the winter chill creeps in,
the dust now settles.
Within the silence
of these hallowed grounds,
the echoes of laughter now lost.
As I watch from beyond.
A ghost draped in apathy,
watching the remnants of me buried,
watching the last echoes of my warmth
fade into cold ash.
Wondering if I will ever
rise back from the ashes.
No hands reach
into the wreckage.
No voices
call my name.
No one mourns.
And maybe
they never will.
A poem on the loss of identity, loss of self
A poem to mourn as you watch a forced change
