Here’s this dark
undercurrent. A pathway
to explore, when all I had,
where all I held, were stones,
pulled down within pockets –
dragged to see
a void of discontent within me.
You were that rope
around my feet,
with one more kiss to remind me
of whom I had knelt before,
lost deep, buried beneath.
You were a force,
a contagion that moved swift,
keeping me a second ahead,
and a full day backward.
I drifted on a miserable speck,
among endless sands,
returning a cold glance overboard,
over a shoulder with no one’s hand,
to repeat steps on cursed land,
turning apart from sunrises.
Whose life were you,
written among all these bottles?
Broken shapes, discarded shards,
letters that stopped floating
on pathless waves,
to find barren land.
Whose eyes are yours,
when night closes in, from gray?
Among stars, I see
what has eclipsed in a heart –
a thousand years lost,
to impossibility.
A thousand more, to count scars,
repeated in flowing memories,
limited to stumbling steps.
Modern Romanticism 