Solitude

All beauty must fade,

wither, crack, split, die,

and so too the beauty

of sweet hospitality

loses something magical

when put to a test.

Splintering down to

strained smiles,

curt little whispers

behind a turned back

summon up strangleweed

between the gaping cracks

of a path we walked

for so long until "so long."

There's a blind desire

to douse what remains

in that left-behind radiance

with a drowning of petrol,

a gasoline baptism,

and send it out with a pyre:

something to remember.

 

Done