STAND II

Beneath a sky veiled in black velvet silence The moon’s silver sliver grins like a knife, a greedy eye Carving hollow light across a hallowed field Where footsteps dissolve and flee Consumed by the earth’s whispers Each step is a though forgotten land With each breath As wraiths sigh From the shadows of lost dreams Trees loom ancient sentinel; watch Brittle bones forgotten, lost Reaching into the heavens heart Begging for mercy, on barren waste Tree limbs snap in the wind’s cruel hands The air shivers With the memory Of lives buried blurred & burn In this barren sanctuary, N frost. Stand I Even the stars stare in oblivion With suspicion and disdain Their cold, indifferent gaze Mirrors reflect emptiness Carved deep in the hollow chest of this, my world The snow, so pure, so undisturbed, I bare I lie stretched thin to the madness below A burial shroud for truths I dare not name or know What spirits wander here, there unseen Passing onto their frozen ground Whispers curl from the shadows like smoke, Words dissolve before they can be heard; I stare A language no human tongue can shape Speak of sorrow, of time unwound Hearts abandoned in the spaces between breaths You can feel it, can’t you? I know, I will. Weight of what’s been lost Unspoken ache of broken light Tangled in the roots of this night Pain echoes, stretches across centuries, Twisting through silence a scar, bright n clear In the distance, something sits, unmoving Flickers of movement at the edge of my vision No, place to run from shadows that conspire When I carry the darkness inside The snow is not clear only clean, remembering Beneath my fragile surface, Secrets buried deep, my soul seeps Eons refrain and moonquakes the eternal night Even the stars have forgotten their names. Even old wound remembers the blade I stand alone, though no voice greets the world Only the silence, Only the wind knows Only the frost bites, black regret I stand listening I listen deeply to the night I hear the whispers The soft sighs of spirits Mourn; not for me A collection of fractured mirrors cast Reflecting nothing Hollow absence of what was I, human Night stretches endlessly Each hour is heavier than the last Sky, so distant, I walk, but the snow consumes my steps, As if the earth itself is trying to erase my soul Forgetting I ever walked this earth Maybe I am just fleeting shadows On the surface of something far older, far colder. On this night, fresh and clear Where the air is serene And the snow lies in mocking purity The world hums with quiet violence Of what remains unseen