You swore you would not pass the decade line.
You swore you would be enough to stop.
You swore and you swore until words were gasping breaths.
Leave the past behind as has been written all this time
in every trail of prose stemming from a sweeping pen stroke,
claiming this is the last note to be given on the plunge.
When the final page of the ascending moon is locked into a screen
with the key tossed aside to keep a faded identity inside,
is it a desire fulfilled or does it reappear against will?
Is it the only complaint you’ll commit to paper
or will a medicated thought break the ranks
and push down a wandering heart’s hand,
bleeding colors of a promise to be forgotten
but a promise that puts up fists against passing age?
You swore you would cancel the light.
You swore you would ease the aching.
All was said while all along you were swearing a song,
committing trauma to a confined space of brief beauty
kept close to chest, off the cartographer’s eye,
remained as an uncharted second life to hide from the first:
A crumbling stone statue static in storming weather.
Would anything ever move you from that perch
when stubbornness commanded none should dare approach?
You were saying you were lifting a burden
when you drifted off a balcony’s pedestal.
But all that could do was a fleeting flash of a gravitation change
and an enduring mark of the pain that stays the chase.
You swore you would pass away
and you’re fading every day.
( ❤ Mitch)