eventually, you begin to search for peace.
you smell of desperation and muffled tears.
eventually, you don’t know what the words
can do for you anymore;
you put them aside.
they follow you like dreams.
all you can give yourself
is a quick poem on a cold morning.
all you can see is a faint sunrise,
from the frosted glass window of your
cold, cold bathroom. it did not shine
you never knew death tasted so much like reality.
you never knew people leave like this.
you knew the sadness would come back. you knew
it always does. at 7:30 am, you can pretend
the silence is peace. at 7:30 am, perhaps it is
the nights are what really got to you. they did. the big feelings, the constant sensation
of falling, the thundering thousand voices that hammer in your mind while the world around
is sinister and silent, and darkness covers the forests with a shroud -
(i have used that simile a hundred times:
darkness always covers the world like a shroud
in the worlds of my misplaced poems. a shroud
is such a lovely, lilting word. it sounds so sombre.
two weeks ago, i saw a shroud for the first time.
i saw a shroud and a pyre and a collective grief
so large i was afraid i would drown in it. the pyre
was flaming and red and achingly hot. the shroud
was irrelevant, simple, and white. now burnt.)
- darkness was not like a shroud, it was not covering
a dead thing, it was not a bitter truth and a finality,
it was not the end of a blossoming fierce life.
i must not call the darkness a shroud.
the darkness, it will come
and the darkness, it will go
it always was and always will be so.
the faint sunrise gives way to a lovely hard sun.
some kind of peace. some restless rest. some long forgetting.