shards

Shards

Here amid the ghosts

                        and scattered leaves

            I watch

            numb

            as shards of my life

            flitter in the warm wind

            float

            softly to heaven

                        and vanish

Taking with them what remains of me.

I have stomped on the ashes

I have scattered the bones

I have ground the remains beneath my heel

                        until nothing is left but

                        empty and silent

                        my soul

                        empty and silent

                        watching

Ready for the next journey,

            the next odyssey.

These silver shards, razor sharp,

            flicker on the breeze

            in the twilight

            drifting, fluttering, going

            wherever

            lost and fragmented dreams go.

If I could capture just one of them,

hold it in my open palm one instant,

and withstand the pain

as it slices my hand to the bone

            (as it will inevitably do because

            it must),

bloody and strafed,

            my hand would hold

            for that one moment

            my life,

            and

            I might once more understand.

But I cannot.

In the thickening evening,

the last glistening shards meander skyward,

and I turn,

I who have created them by destroying myself,

and join the other ghosts

            in the endless

            drifting

            wind.