Modern Romanticism

Faces turn to frost,
breaths turn to silver.
I am burning for another storm
to continue this sequence,
to remember that same fragrance
lost at the edges of fingers.

Who had gone to rubble?
What had yet to be built,
trusted for its sturdiness?

I have spread ashes
to be carried like seeds,
having nothing more to leave,
no one more to bleed for.

Who will draw me back
to a spot I vowed to forget?
I fail to come to terms
with symptoms I’ve come
to suppress, while I regress
back to childish appetite.

I come to want
what I am disciplined
to ignore, to abhor,
while I fade with the ink
that writes these words
at a cliff, at this brink.