Don’t we all
find ourselves, tumbling back –
taking back breaths we were not
meant to keep? Aren’t we all
haunted, of those spaces
we were meant to leave, abandon
to their shadows? Of memories
that keep us blinded
to places, ahead,
I have cradles beneath cradles,
as I have arms that resist
when I comfort what has left,
as a breath beneath my breaths.
A grain of soil,
beneath all that I hurl upon it.
I hear, I am haunted
by those tragic sentences –
words, meant to convey
a theme that cannot stay.
A smile beneath a floor,
like a shadow under an extended vow,
like an extended day
on that absence, of one who
never volunteered to stay.
A simple rose petal
hangs as a badge upon this worn coat,
as a decaying mind clings to hope
that light will find its way
in not leading me astray.
Modern Romanticism 