Contrition

I forget the name, the place
but never the breeze – nor the blaze of your eyes as I muttered something
that amused you.
Our cheeks quickened in colour – the heat of burning wood
and us, together

That scene, it sings your name

pursed lips that said I was stupid but you liked it

No sence remains. It’s your birthday and I’m shut up behind you, like all the ones before

Flickers of past, like old photographs

but we don’t dance in arms coiled like the strangers in pictures
though we bathe in their stagnant silence – having no words but walls, walls so tall that I no longer know how to reach you

To teach myself how to climb

And there’s so much that remains
unsaid, undone.
Longing – lingering on the stonework
seeping quietly as buds of before blossom, murdering the very mortar of our seperation
providing hope for future flowers

It’s why I sit here, chisel in hand

It’s your birthday, again. I’m to blame and I miss you. Quietly.

Behind closed doors.

Pandora’s Guilt

There is a moth

beating its wings inside of the lampshade.

I watch it haunt me from up there,

Perspiring the need for absolution

until I vomit regret

with a violence

of the Earth at present.

Still.

As I shake with a torment of ages

it continues to tink-tink and flicker,

casting further shadows on my

shattered soul.

In the early days I was hopeful

for a remedy

but that was the sweet scent

lingering in the air.

My final escapee.

I tried to catch them, extinguish them all .

Every single, last one.

But tears of desperation evaporated in

the flames that should

never have been given.

They were of a speed that mocked

me

dividing like cells, intent on poisoning.

The aids of the world of then;

digesting

destroying

mutating life before my eyes.

And so I stopped. Admitted defeat and

indulged in weary desolation.

Began to observe my creation

every affliction, a wound upon my

skin.

It was with unprecedented sadness

that I watched them spread, spoiling

the beauty of my beginning.

And I was that, before then.

Before the whispering brain

boiled over in lunacy,

spasms of interest

paralysing my conscience

until I was gripped; possessed by it.

You see,

I am a map of scars

for your world of pain,

Learned all too late

how

curiosity kills more

than just cats.

And for my part in that,

I grieve.