You Kept Me

I was left alone, in the cold

Nights went by, slowly—with echoes

Of raindrops on a shattered pane

Succeeding, cascading, falling in waves

And shivering tides—I shifted

To semi-absence, an oblique translucence, dropped the scales

Unbalanced and diluvian the clouds weighed

On my heart and the sky—you kept me

Tethered to your heart and though

You are now gone my chains still bind me—to what? to loss,

Inescapably—your specter follows me

Wherever I hide, assuming your story has eyes

I find repose—where? nowhere

And recluse I mourn—you

Are the shadows beneath my feet

And also the sun above me, you are the chimes and the wind

You surround me, your ghost—darkly

Exudes the pain left on your path

And bittersweet is the spectacle

Of your ruins still firmly rooted in the living

Or rather the mold they have formed in the dense clay of my psyche

Where rainwater grows stagnant

You are everywhere—and nowhere

You continue to grip us slyly, as vines,

And I come to wonder when your branches will finally

Suffocate my foliage—my last leaf fallen,

The invisible blight leeching every last ampere of sunlight

That your void be truly empty at last

That I may carry—and you may rest.