THE RETURN

A voyage to yourself

These bed covers
Roll like mountains
Their weight crashing
Atop the ebbing waves
Of heavy slumber.

Day breaks
Giving way to
The strangeness
Of being
An audience
To oneself.

With whose eyes
Is it that I see?
Lungs fill.
Whose breath
Do I breathe?

As we walk
It seems that
The sun kisses
Another’s skin and
The heart flits
By another’s beat.

It seems like only
The edge of emotions
Are felt.
The mind chases
Scrambles
Fingers run
Feverishly
Ravenously
Along the cusp
Of something
Anything
In a desperate search
For a feeling
Once known.

Only crumbs remain —
Meagre morsels
Of mind
And sense,

The after-taste
of a stone-cold brew.
The lingering scent
Of her perfume.
A quiet echo
Of another time,
Another life
Left long behind.

On we walk,
Legs drag
Knee-deep
Through rivers of pitch.
Currents known to us well,
Threatening
To swallow us whole,
As they have before.
The stride buckles,
but does not break.

Legs drag
Waist-deep.
The threat
Now a promise.
Our last fire,
Quenched
As the cold locks
Flesh into stone.

All ‘round,
All paths
Are shrouded in a veil
Of tomorrow’s mourning.

Breath arrested,
Never quite reaching
The chest, now bound.
There is little too
That these eyes now see
In the formless dark
Of this sunken place.

Shall this be your tomb?

Shall the cold encase
Your shattered heart
And doom you here,
Forevermore?

Shall this void be a testament,
A grand edifice to pain,
Suffering,
And toil?

Shall this place devour
Even the last of good
Within you?

Perhaps.

But truth is,
This dreadful traveller
Makes for a terrible companion
And an even worse liar.

Tongues spoken,
Deceiving
Even the sharpest mind
Away from the truth
That the darkest shadow
Must be cast
From the brightest light.

Your eyes, stolen
Cast upon visions
That never come to pass.

Your shallow breath,
Taken,
As if to never return.

These eyes were yours,
This mind your own,
This body
The only home
You’ve ever known.

RETURN

By a stride buckled,
but unbroken,
Step-
by-bloody-step,

RETURN

Claw
And gnash,
If you must.
Crawl,
Inch-by-bloody-inch.

RETURN

By want,
Or by will,
Or by might,
Or by zeal,

RETURN

Through the harsh winds of winter,
Call forth an invincible summer and

RETURN