Price of Paradise

We don't talk about it Since hands upon the clock have ceased to move When minutes creep, on skittish feet The walls grow small~ By blue degrees, she drowns slowly Waiting on skies which never clear While she cuts holes in paper souls Calling pain by prettier names She is not invisible Although she is unseen~ Cloudy skies have beauty, too Dappled in blue's infinite base But all the sunlight is full of smoke Frost tipped flowers of summers fled Into the wind of oblivion Melancholy lullabies Scattered like coins down wishing wells Price of paradise She lies and says that she is fine When truth is too fearful to seek~ Here lies the grave of innocence Guarding roses of agony Too brief a heaven to reside In vastness We shall lie Under a thousand eyes~ I am full Of emptiness The silence Of severed hope Sinking to The floor of futility Under the toll Of heaven's weight Distract my dark thoughts New moon's amnesia As the ground Falls off my feet... Her epitaph, an unsent letter~ It takes more sight Than you would see To love the soul That belongs to me. 3/21/21 Fragments of Verse contest Sponsor: John Lawless