Spiritus Vitae

Is love dead?

Or merely in disguise

Cloaked in words

Unrecognizable as true

I love and yet

Am not loved back

So I cease to believe

In the fairy tales

Of enough

Being enough

Wanting enough

Needing enough

Words to the wind

For they cannot be a prayer

 

“I love you”

And leaves fall to the ground

For lack of breath

Choked back in closed throats

With nothing to give them life

“why not you”

And I cannot answer

As I do not know

The why or reason

Of the failure to close

Out my heart to certain pain

 

That time

Knowing full well

There cannot be another

There are not enough pieces

Remaining to piece a whole

Quilt, blanket, shroud

Winding sheet to cover death

Nothing to hide behind

Save a crooked mask

 

And In its place a rock

Cold hard coal

Gifted

When not found on the list

Of the wanted

Tallying the wrongs

I must have committed

And still not knowing

The truth of what was

 

 

A winter heart lies fallow

In departed hope

Crimson fades to the grey

Of blood deliberately spilled

On the purity of navy robes

Trailing on the ground

Behind one lost

Forgotten

And abandoned

In shadows cast by silence

No longer able to feel

The breath of life

 

© NP 8/1/12