I Know No Stone, Only Pain
I mourn your death, though you still breathe and speak,
No carved stone waits where your memory should lie;
I hear a silence where your laughter used to peak,
And rehearse your absence like a practiced goodbye.
There is no grave to mark the shape of your end,
No earth has closed where your shadow might remain,
Yet I still kneel where I imagine you’ll descend,
Tracing future hollowed out by unnamed pain.
I build you a coffin out of all I cannot say,
And line it with the seconds you have not yet lost,
Each one a small betrayal of a coming day,
Each one a quiet accounting of an unseen cost.
Your voice still stands, but I already hear it fade,
Like a room remembering the furniture gone cold,
Like iron slowly learning to degrade,
While no hand has yet dared to make the story old.
So I learn your leave before it learns your name,
And I grieve a shape that time has not agreed to form;
A future stitched from silence, woe, and borrowed flame,
Where I know no stone—only pain keeping me warm.
Copyright © Adalyn Alcott | Year Posted 2026
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