UNFINISHED THINGS

 

 Unfinished Things  

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I’m ashamed for you to glimpse me now,

A relic crumbling under time’s heavy thumb—

New wrinkles carved like rivers through weary clay,

Skin toughened to leather, scorched by endless worry,

Stretched taut over bones that groan with every step.

Rest is a drought, a parched desert in my nights,

Sleep a distant mirage shimmering beyond reach—

My eyes sag, ringed with shadows black as soot,

Lids fluttering against a dawn I dread to face.

This is me, unmade, unraveling thread by thread,

A tapestry of youth you’d strain to recognize.  

Once, over chipped mugs of flat Diet Coke,

Fumes curling from chained-smoked cigarettes,

We spun grand theories into the hazy air—

Applications of life, love, and meaning,

Words tumbling like dice across a cluttered table.

Now those half-baked dreams sit abandoned,

Unfinished manuscripts strewn on coffee tables,

Pages yellowing, edges curling in defeat,

Ink smudged by the sweat of restless hands.

In the rusted file cabinets of my mind,

They rust untouched, locked behind dented steel,

Ideas once electric now gather dust,

Their sparks snuffed out, cold and undone.  

Your absence is the fault line splitting this ruin—

When you were here, my beliefs stood tall,

Towers of conviction piercing the sky,

Built on the bedrock of your voice, your nod,

Your faith that made the impossible glow.

Now they’ve collapsed, a heap of shattered stone,

Foundations cracked and swallowed by silence,

No hands to shore them up, no will to rebuild.

The difference is you—your being away—

A void that sucks the air from my lungs,

Leaving me gasping amid the wreckage of us.  

Those untouched ideas, once ripe with promise,

Wither on the vine, starved of your light—

They fail to peak, to crest into truth,

Stunted saplings in a soil gone sour.

I see them in the corners of my days,

Ghosts of what could’ve been,

Their whispers taunting through the stillness,

Unrealized, unhatched, unborn.

Without your belief to kindle mine,

They’re just husks, brittle and hollow,

Drifting like ash on a wind that won’t carry them home.  

I miss our happily-ever-after,

That fragile fairy tale we stitched together,

Threaded with laughter and late-night schemes,

A quilt now frayed, moth-eaten, torn.

I wander these rooms, a prisoner of my own decay,

The air thick with the stale reek of regret,

Cigarette butts piled in chipped ashtrays,

Cans of soda sweating rings into the wood.

Every creak of the floorboards mourns your step,

Every tick of the clock a lash on my shame—

For you to see me now, this husk of me,

Is to witness a dream unmoored,

A life unspooling into the dust,

Without you to gather the threads,