Heartbreak has found me,

As it always finds me,

Unprepared, weak in my

Loneliness, it feeds on it

As a shadow feeds on a

Lowering sun, gaining

Strength while it covers

Empty yards and hidden

Alleys, delighted in the

Surety of the darkness

That covers my thoughts

With twisted images of

A face that still haunts

Me in the gloaming of

My soul.

A memory that still festers,

A splintered fragment lodged

Much too deep for cutting, it

Spreads infection called Betrayal,

A common disease in a heart that

Bleeds with a rare condition named

Trust, leaving images engraved in

Its wake of a face that became a

Stone mask, embedded in that

Fragmented memory that has

Its source in a now empty room

Like a silent icon of what should

Have been but never came to be,

Her eyes shadows unto themselves,

Sightless now and far away.

END

“Things That Eat”