The Bottom Edge of the Clouds

This ringing silence

this house, once filled

a place of voices now

gone silent, a place that

once echoed with the laughter

of the fallen, shifted beneath

the steps of those who

no longer walk this world

The strange and willful

business of the day, the

loading of the dishwasher

the clearing away of the

trash, the small task we

throw ourselves into as

if it had some meaning,

some purpose greater than

to nullify the strange

empty in the wake of

all these souls, now

gone beyond the veil

These long days when we

are fueled upon the fires

we light within ourselves,

seeking anything, any way

to expel the thousand

screams building forever

at the back of our throats

to exhaust ourselves so that

we have no more energy to

rip at our own breast in

the grief we will not let

ourselves feel

The grand and useless angers

we find within ourselves,

bonfires of our own souls as

we rail against the trivialities

of the moment, hiding behind them

so that the oncoming dark cannot

catch us for a time.

But the night draws ever darker

around our faces, and there are

no stars, but only the purple

light of the city reflected against

the bottom edge of the clouds,

and there is no escape for us,

we who live to rail against the

silence and know our own frailty

against the hands of fate.

Patrick M. Tracy

5/22/17