Hourglass

What flames may leave behind
No sto­ry could do justice –
Dream frag­ments seared to ash
Silent­ly slum­ber­ing, safe­ly dissolved
Free to live amidst what killed them
And we’re watch­ing fragments
Set­ting with the sun

Awake!
Under a nascent moon –
Amidst a ruin of destruction?

I’m not what I was when sun last shone
Or what I could have been today.
Inter­lop­ing and interjected
Has become this course I walk.

Dying is more than lit­er­ary, or literal,
For you can feel its end­less chambers
While yet warm hearts still beat

But after good peo­ple utter­ly failed
And secret fairy­tales turned to dust
It gives pause to feel its throes
Ask­ing if deter­mi­na­tion yet survives

And I stand up, eyes cast upwards
To gaze up the beams of star­lit hope
To say one hum­ble thing –
I’m still here.

For why? when dreams so eas­i­ly die;
For what? if love and hate are one;

Between crys­talline tears I wonder,
Watch­ing things beyond my influence
If this was nev­er what I came here for,
None of the dream gave satisfaction,

So,
What now?

A thou­sand life­times ago in a hand­ful of years
We all thought this would look different

But it’s not.

Though final­ly I know cours­es ne’er to travel
With the wis­dom gained to change my future
I can’t begin to fath­om its cost.

That’s what haunts me
When I close my eyes.

I’m still here.