Modern Romanticism

That final step to take
buried you deep,
kept you far - far from
who will not ever
venture to your hiding place,

drowned in a flood,
cradled in the dark.

To pure eyes
that see something else,
I am not adopting them
when I cannot clean these hands
of what gets dragged in,

in piles of nothingness.

Mountains of ashes
brought skyward,
laid out as miserable cushions
for me to bring a tired head
to its pitiful mimicry
of a slumber.

I am hearing your pulse
when I trace a memory
back to a blinding lighthouse,

as it tells me to reach further
to something I fear,
to someone I cannot bring near.