in a sense my innocence
has brought about some strange events
your unabashed sinfulness
my cute, careful religiousness
a surprising synthesis

in a sense, was my innocence
a recompense for your bitterness?
i sought your soul with reverence
from your tenderness, my mind undressed
a haunt old as some sacred texts

of a pure and honest impetus
our pride found a submissiveness
my naivete,
your diligence
thanks to our collective dissonance
a love made to be infamous

A flower is found, its color dimming beneath the vanishing sun. Its petals curl gently, fragile beneath even the softest touch, too weary to resist. I cradle it between my fingers, its stem still standing tall. Like a lover, I tug, asking the wind if my thoughts are true. A petal falls. She loves me. A whisper of grace. My fingers trace the memories we’ve shared, her laughter filling my air, her eyes piercing into my soul, that tender look she reserves for the one she’s chosen. Another tug. She loves me not. The air turns colder against my skin. Silence swells, heavier than our arguments. There’s no fury left, only distance growing wider. She loves me. A faint flicker of hope stirs inside me, a light too dim to break the dark. Yet her voice echoes in my mind, looping endlessly. She loves me not. The petal crumbles beneath my careless touch, and something deep within me aches. There is no grand finale, no clean ending, just the quiet drift into empty space, nothing solid to grasp. She still loves me. I speak it aloud, a half-truth dressed as a prayer. Maybe if I say it, it will become real. Maybe if I bend it just right, it will last a little longer. She loves me not. The final petal, once strong, lets go. It flutters down, brushing the earth as if to kiss away its own wounds. I lie back, my head in the grass before night fully falls, fingers stained with the remnants of love and rust. The flower is gone now, and only one question remains: Why is it that hearts can stop, yet still ache on?

“I thought I could outrun the grief of losing you,
trying to bury my sadness, my pain,
using anything, everything, to make me forget,
to numb the ache, to pretend for just a moment
that you weren’t gone.

But no matter what I do, it still finds me—
in the quiet, in the dark, in the empty spaces you left behind.

I see you everywhere.
In the faces of strangers, in the echoes of old conversations.
I think about you all the time,
wondering if you’d still be here if I had done something—anything—differently.
I blamed myself for your absence.

Who am I supposed to work hard for now?
Who is left to be proud of me?
You were the only one who ever truly cared.

I tried to run from the grief,
but grief is cruel—it hides, it waits,
it strikes when I least expect it,
dragging me back into the loss, the emptiness, the silence.

I tried to escape, but I failed.
I always fail.”

I know loss,
Believe me,
I know lows.

While my life now glitters in gold,
I will never forget it's old rusty reds,
Believe me, I know the blows.

Nature

     Once upon a blue sky, laced with golden hues,
I laid my eyes upon a cloud, that reminded me of you
    And in the midst  of reckoning,  I saw your    
     smiling face,
Then like a wisp of smoke you vanished from this place

    I start to walk along a path full of cobblestone,   But couldn’t shake the feeling I wasn’t all alone
    In the depths of the treetops a spix called out your name,
Startled and confused, I too did the same

     Your voice seemed to whisper from the wind
      that blew my hair,
Reaching out to catch it, were you really there
    A warm and tender light, settled near my feet,
As if a long lost friend coming here to meet

    A light rain started falling, which sounded like
     your laughter,
I’m not sure the game nature’s playing, or exactly what she’s after
    But here along this path, confusion takes  
     control,
And all I really know is from me darkness stole

   My heart is in utter turmoil, its breaking me in two,
With the images that nature is pretending to be
you
   You’ve long since gone from here, with
     memories left unknown,
Like the flame from a candle after it’s been blown

   Once upon natures lie, her illusions made me
    see,
Lured in by nature’s mask, I lost myself completely

What joys, what torments, what treasures
does this new day bring?

I have left sleep behind,
fitful and unsettled as always,
with its strange images
and surreal conversations with the long dead,
conversations that make no sense.

As consciousness comes back to me,
I hear a tolling bell
calling the faithful to prayer
but I pay no heed
because I know my prayers,
if I had any,
would go unanswered.

Instead, what prayers I may have had
are given to the coffee cup
as I drain yet another
and swallow its bitter grounds
and draw on another cigarette,
taking its harsh smoke
deep into my lungs.

And even though it’s Spring
with the burgeoning of new life,
it is cool and a wind stirs the newborn leaves
and the sky remains dull and grey.

Fully awake now,
the familiar pains return.
Not just the physical
but also the ones in my mind
as I contemplate another day ahead,
mundane and alone.

But, if I were honest with myself,
the mundane satisfies me
and I relish being alone.

I put on some melancholy music
and lets its sad sentiment
flow over me, gentle, welcoming,
to keep my sombre mood
from falling too far into despair.

This state of mind
is all too familiar now
and I no longer try to push it away.

And every day I make a cursory effort
to stop myself from contemplating my remaining years
but acknowledging that all too few lie ahead.

Looking back,
I can recall from over those many years, many decades past now,
the memories I have
as a child,
as a youth,
as a man,
as a father.

I remember those memories fondly:
of people, too many now the ghosts I speak with in my dreams,
and of times when the future was so far beyond the distant horizon
that I didn’t give it a moment’s thought.

But now that once far-flung horizon looms ever closer
and where before I could contemplate
ten, twenty, fifty years hence,
now even a mere ten, twenty years from now
is uncertain and shrouded in a fog of unknowing.

It is with this mindset I face each day
and this new day is no different from yesterday’s
and will be again tomorrow,
and the next day,
and the days beyond that
until I reach that horizon.

And I dare not contemplate what lies beyond.


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