1Looking at the solemn plaques
Reading the last rites
Scanning over marble,
Tracing curious fingers over smooth,
Flawless pebbles
Crouching down to whisper
A last, sorrowful goodbye
Off, out of the suffocating garden
Off and running
Back to the desolate house
Draped in a shroud of shivah
Flanked with covered mirrors
Ones that would shatter if gazed upon.
The quiet of a haunted house,
Filled only with the wailings of
A longing from the mourning friend
The depressed zealot, the one who found faith
In his soft caress.
The one who chose to believe that his words
Carried the righteous messages.
That he never meant any harm to anyone.
She rocks back and forth,
Ankles creaking with age,
With sorrow.
She picks at the fraying ends
Of the now off-white dress.
The intricate beading around the collar,
The swirling, voluminous skirts.
She collapses over the water-stained boxes
The portal to the realm of her joyous past.
"No more…" she whispers.
She buries her face into the billowing silk
And allows herself to plummet to the polished floorboards.
She cradles the photographs, the memoirs, the love…
"You said you could stay with me…"
Tears that have been fossilized for years begin to
Press against her eyes.
"You said you could heal me…"
Her breathing became ragged, pressing against
Her lungs, suffocating her last thread to the "real world"
"You said you could love me…"