Somewhere Between

From desolation we have
come, and to desolation
we soon find ourselves
bound, ash collected
upon our wings and settled
against the broad and
tangible expanse of our
shoulders.

From innocence we have
come, and into the fire,
into the storm of this gray
dust, the realization
that all the terrors we
dreamed and awoke
gasping were only child’s
things, only simple reflections
from a clear and unsullied
glass, and now we can
only hope for the curse
of remembrance to fade,
to go into the earth bowed
and sundered in the mind,
all the awful realizations
scraped away with time’s
rough blade.

From frailty in the body,
we have waxed overgrown
and mighty, though our
souls have drained away
like water from a cracked
cup held in shaky hands,
and as we droop further
to earth, spent as old helium
balloons and just as deflated,
we will truly be empty,
and we will grasp foolishly
for things we always knew
to be false, all those easy
roads to redemption,
all those codified words
that in the end change nothing,
those palliatives we loved
to think ourselves too
square jawed to indulge.

Moving from stardust to
spent powder, we fly on
until our wings are too
weak to hold us aloft,
the ash of fallen empires
burning too dense upon
the higher air for us to
see ahead, our faculties
failing and energy run
dry so that, as others
have said, fatigue makes
cowards of us, once mighty
and stupid enough to
think ourselves immune.