Dark and damp,
crammed with narrow passageways,
my life has become a cave.
I find myself stumbling, lost
within it.

See stalactites,
sudden, piercing reminders
of how time has altered me.
Stalagmites build layer upon layer,
prick old wounds.

Drip. Drip. Drip.
Sound of steady tears released
into trickling streams that merge
down to soul’s sanctuary,
a flood plain.

Wild screeching –
bats, blind as I’ve become, swoop
in, hang upside down, disrupt
all but mem’ry of what I
lost in you.

More haunting
are the echoes: your words still
reverberating inside
casting shadows in the dark
hollow place.