Lonely

Things look differently in hindsight Objects, ideas, and people can take on a life of their own What once existed serenely now rears up on its scaly haunches Breathing a most fowl and unpleasant exhalation An all-encompassing shroud Like an impenetrable fortress of fog Draping the countryside of one’s grey matter in an even duller demure The palate, once a tapestry of color now left drab and undone Like a piece of paint peeled back to revel the undisguised underbelly Traces of things left to yesteryear—no hope of return From the lifeless clutches that are the all-too apparent circumstances Flesh gone cold from inactivity and the onset of life’s winter season Stripped bare of all life, color and action The longing that awaits one upon this arrival is quite unbearable The kind that weighs you down, like an anchor With waves a ’crashing, tearing at the very life line Memories wash ashore with debris Leaving cracked fragments of one’s life among the remains Replete with the cavernous hollows that is solitude One grasps at swirling phantoms in the night, always a step behind Left with nothing but the painful yearning for something to fill the ever growing void The kind of mass that devours all things that radiate Nothing escapes its covetous glance Like a ravenous galactic black hole Everything is lost in its path Growing like the sole vine in a once bustling building Slowly ensnaring, brick by brick, the very foundations Entangled in the rubble of rotted wood and concrete Nonchalantly passing by unassuming photographs Hazy memories now long forgotten Remnants are all that remain