Painstaking numbness
has carried your torch,
has let your tongue
taste bitter air.
You comprehend
where fewest
are ever determined
to go, because you
deliver to life
its frozen trail.
Where you tread
is on an ocean
without a lighthouse
inside the next mile,
nor the one after.
What you’ve bandaged
is a long story
without an ending.
What you’ve undone
is a life that hangs its ruin
like an ornament.
When you breathe,
you unleash ash
from anguished lungs,
cold in those flames
that have comforted you
to no beginning.
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