Notes About The Poem

For the 'Between Here and Eternity' Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Sotto Poet 
"Exploring the threshold between reality and imagination, the real and unreal and why it matters little and has no real consequence"

Listen to poem:

When All Is Said and Done

The threshold retreats
each time we lean towards it
our shadow leans too
the border we came to find
passes through the one who looks.

Light awakens eyes
sound forms only when we hear
senses bloom in names
nothing reaches us untouched
the world arrives wearing us.

Dreams borrow their bones
from faces, colors and fears
gathered while awake
reality lends a hand
with fingerprints left on things.

Mirrors stare us back
with left and right out of place
silvered witnesses
each reflection swears it saw
what stood where the glass had not.

We call it the sea
one word imprisons the waves
depth drowns in the word
we name what cannot be held
then cling tight onto the name.

Memory says done
then rearranges the room
each time we return
yesterday changes its clothes
while insisting it was there.

We cross the crime scene
fingerprints bloom on the glass
we came here to see
plain simple reality
but we leave all our smears there.

It does not matter
for what we call that matter
is only a dream
born from imagination
wanting real consequence.

All is never said
done is never quite done, yet
the riddle remains
what's real is unfinished
neither gets the final word.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2026

Poem

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