For Willie
The sky folds in the moon,
churning the stars into embers,
into the words softly stinging
the back of your throat,
too choked up to decipher
between time and loss,
and how well the two coincide.
And you stop.
You stop for the trees,
noticing how they reach out,
attempting to wrap their limbs
around the sun. They yearn
to pull in its fiery warmth,
in hopes of a burning embrace
in return. To ash, they crumble-
an ocean of grinning, rotten dust.
You stop to think of this,
how simple it would be
to come to grips with the trigger-
so easily slipped back, released,
firing quick- almost too sudden to see
through the sharp bellows of an end,
sought out by a faithless forgiveness.
Yet, you stay, hanging on
for those lost souls. Keep them still,
held tight in hands accustomed to holding.
In the absence of fingers to fill,
the spaces between grow cold.
Inside, you feel off-centered.
The pit of your stomach rises up,
exposing past afflictions,
how well they resonate with the present,
and with what’s to come.
Bent up and broken,
for the time being.
The light in your eyes collapses,
into your soul- undone-
frayed by the constant picking
at wounds long scabbed over
by time’s mending spirit.
You stand strong
in the stark elegance of healing.
Turn your back to the night,
to its dreadful tapestry,
a menacing, thread-bearing sorrow.
Stare out into the mourning
that drenches the air upon awakening.
Inhale. It sticks to your lungs,
remaining until the moon finds its way again.
Exhale. Grief will cloud the room,
staining unpacified walls.
Your mind, hindered by the darkness
pressing into your eyes an insufferable gloom.
Stand strong in the face of this,
when your heart retracts,
enveloping itself until finally small,
and ignorable. Steady yourself.
Should you fall, I will be there to catch you,
before the depths of absent grace,
the pillars of time, unmoving.
