The Death of Living

Shadows on the wall,

Fill the spaces you left behind.

Echoes in my heartbeat,

A thud for every tear.

Each breath becomes a step,

A step between me,

And the space I last saw your face.

So my path becomes a war,

And I am torn between the two;

Between the burning fires of change,

the surging currents of life itself,

and the ache of the child,

who clings to the echoes,

to the memory,

of the last time she felt your embrace.

But fast flowing are the rivers of life,

All overlapping,

Never ceasing,

Yet I cling to their banks,

Fingernails cracked and filled with dirt;

Torn and bloody.

To let go is to die,

Over and over again.

The hammering forge of rebirth,

Doesn’t feel like a phoenix,

No,

It feels like a crumbling fortress,

And I am holding it together,

With feeble strands of ivy,

No,

It feels like a re-death,

Each time the chisel falls.

Echoes you once were;

The shadows between the stars,

And echoes you’ve become again.

The tides they come,

The tides they go,

But I am a rock,

Thrown to and fro by the violence of the waves,

Cracking slowly,

Breaking slowly,

Just enough each time,

To let the light in.

But the light is not as we thought,

For the light itself is knowing;

Stark and garish clarity.

She is gone,

The rays tells me,

She is gone.

So the child clings to echoes,

And the child clings to shadows,

But onwards life does surge.

Do I stay or do I go?

I know the answer,

I know the answer well,

For it has been asked and I have answered,

Many deaths before.

But I will stay a little longer,

Until the scent of your perfume fades,

From the bed sheets I have not changed,

And the ache of all my grief,

Grants me the space to draw breath,

So that I may know I am alive,

Even though you live no longer.