Broken silences, whispered from

An old photograph he keeps in a

Shoebox full of collected memories,

Cries to him from a burnt out

Flashbulb tossed away years before.

Cries, despite the smiling image

Trapped within, she who had once

Upon a time walked these rooms

And opened windows so curtains might

Dance in the scent of her perfume.

Cries, her face pressed against his neck, teeth

Bearing down to stifle her passion, fingernails

Leaving welts in his back, not so very different

From the welts that would form across his heart

In later days, the lashings of her tongue.

Broken silences that reverberate, out of tune with

The past, a jangling discord of shattered certainties

Performed by no-talent hands, clutching a Polaroid

He can no longer decipher, his eyes much too serious

And much too dark as shadows grow long across the floor.

Broken silences, distant echoes he tries

To ignore but cannot, calling out to him

From a battered shoebox heavy with the

Burden of yesterdays, he bears that weight,

A prisoner of self-condemnation.

END

“Broken Silences”