open casket

The time has passed, the deed’s been done. Reddened eyes and tear slick faces, the empty husk and the hollow ritual. All that was given long gone. Dusty shelves of books unmoved, tchotchkes and orphaned keys, the laden name dead on the tongue. Love just another word laid waste.

This is an exercise in the futile, the banality of the choices still left. Check the figures, fill in the forms, what is there to keep you warm? Wind and wishes and the spider striped ceiling. Heartaches and mementos and the rats in the walls.

Write it down to keep the record. Write it down to work it out. It all comes down to the bent of the reader. It all comes down to the work and the pain. The crowds with all their gods and ghosts, fool’s prayers and loaded fragments. Weep away, we are always leaving. Weep away, we were always lost. The name never spoken, a life like footprints taken by the tide.