For Sylvia

Melanie Faith

We are the same—
With different hands to help and strangle.
In my reminiscence humility peaks—
The thought of your expired breath,
Warped and falling on my pen like
Dewdrops on thirsty leaves.
It is that shade of you, the broken yet
Unbending fire, the core of so much desire,
And the truth misplaced with words
Which erase your meaning.
In the snuff of it—the unexplainable, calloused causes
Which bind you to this place—you are faceless,
Eve-breathing and uncanny.
Awaiting revision against the decisions of dreams—
The coffee spoons measuring the life you cursed
In ounces of hate and truth,
Bit by bit at an even gate,
Till the cup overflows, spilling and washing over
Those who dare drink from the wellspring of you.
Removed from hesitance, rare underestimating the
Taste of it, the wholesome taste which lingers upon
Veiling buds that do not open…
The sealed pages sing their cacophonous elegy—
Crying to be reborn, revised;
New-breathing in the shadows of mediocrity.
The dew on the budding leaves heave with thirst,
Wet, moistened by the embrace of your timelessness
And antiquity, surpassing analogous foundation.
Held in the course, broken fingertip of your soiled hands,
You bring your silent tormented treasures.
Far too young to carry the void—
No fruitful replies: it is the song of all of us,
The song given at that chosen place and time
That harkens the differences—
The void’s ever-shifting shape moves
Like seasons of soul, drifting in and out of cerebrum
As if they truly never were.
And perhaps it’s of no importance—
Perhaps they never were;
And all we see is the mirror’s reflection:
Terrible fish, us all.