By the time the sky begins to lighten

In anticipation of the coming day.

I’ve already passed through the morning’s melancholy

Tears, shed under the stars fading glow have dried,


Their cause, not obvious, leaves a lingering unease.

Their unbidden appearance suggests to me a deficit,

Some essential element missing in the world I inhabit.

Or pointing to a sorrow within me of which I am unaware.


This solitary life I lead, long absent a chorus of voices

To provide less toxic explanations.

Leaves me to endlessly repeat

The silent conversation of my insecurities.


A voice reaches out from deep within my memory.

Whispering a warning of the impermanence of words,

Words imagined in the finest detail, yet never spoken aloud.

Now, to be lost forever to this fleeting, transitory life.


This desire to be remembered beyond my numbered days,

A natural rebellion against the imagined darkness of the abyss.

Compels this quest for an antidote to deaths finality.

Yet I have no great works to stake a claim for remembrance.


Will all that I am disappear along with my last breath?

Or will my words, if I chosen well, live on?

As an epitaph carved in stone, standing against time

To carry my name beyond the grave.