NEVER TO SHISPER FAREWELL

 

NEVER TO WHISPER FAREWELL

Never say goodbye,

on the first day of Christmas—

not across telephone lines,

those frail umbilical cords

strung taut as a hangman’s noose,

their pulses stuttering

like the last gasps

of a drowning moth.

Distance unfurls,

a vast raven’s wing

sweeping between us,

and cowardly words

slither forth,

venomous serpents

that strike and shatter

the fragile cathedral

of faith in words—

intimacy,

a wilted rose

trampled underfoot,

touch,

a phantom limb

twitching in the void

of a severed dream.  

Figments of imagination

crumple,

paper cranes

torched by reality’s wildfire,

where annulled ideas

for the new year

spill like gutted fish

around the bin’s rusted jaws,

their scales glinting

with the bitter sheen

of forsaken oaths—

allegiances once forged

in the crucible of our vows,

now molten slag

cooling in the forge

of a winter’s scorn,

their husks

a banquet

for the crows of regret.  

Indefinitely separated,

I’m marooned,

an island adrift

on a sea of splintered glass,

my arms locked

as rusted gates

barring new ideas,

my eyes shuttered

like boarded windows

against novel entrances—

the world a sunken galleon,

its treasures

sinking beneath

the tide of disillusionment’s ink.

I’m a lighthouse

gone dark,

its beacon snuffed

by the fog of your absence,

and I turn inward,

a hermit crab

burrowing into

solitude’s cracked shell.  

Here, I dwell,

choosing seclusion

as a monk dons sackcloth,

to cradle this growing

disappointment—

a leaden anchor

dragging my soul

to the ocean’s floor—

and disinterest

in your ingenuine explanations,

a house of cards

teetering on lies,

each excuse

a hollow reed

whistling in the gale

of my disbelief.

They collapse,

a choir of fallen angels,

and I sit,

a sentinel

in the wreckage,

as the first day of Christmas

dissolves

into a twilight

of unsaid goodbyes,

a shroud

woven from

the threads