Modern Romanticism

I pull letters
from open chests,
carve white into grey
where memories fade,
are washing away
into discoloration.

I’ve taken those letters
forming sentences,
at a sentencing to a love
that wouldn’t stop breathing.

I felt that rush
of cold air, from barren lungs,
when pain floated
up from an ocean’s bottom
to meet me, to chastise me,
for what I couldn’t believe.

I had to let go
of what needed to die,
in its state, for its fate,
dissolving what formed
far too late.

I wanted to give in,
I wanted to shelter
what wanted to left
out in the cold.

I still want to remind myself
of what I will continue to guess
at when it will return,
as a haunt, as a taunt
to my teeming heart.