A dark sludge,
a corruptive force.
A terrible void that swallows you whole.
Inevitable, powerful, and irremovable.
It gnaws on the mind; it demands a sacrifice,
leaving your chest with nothing but a hole.
Big and small, it comes and goes,
but the stain is never gone.
It speaks to you, tempts you like many other,
to make a deal with the devil.
“I wish I could turn back time,”
said the brokenhearted lover.
“I wish I did things differently,”
lamented the childless parent.
It eats and eats, never slows,
until there is nothing but a hole.
It berates you, it questions you,
why you didn’t do better.
“I didn’t know any better,”
the once teenager said.
“No one taught me another way!”
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screamed the patient in the counseling room.
An irremovable shadow;
a stain that can’t be cleaned;
a picture that haunts;
a memory that stays.
Born from nothing, it does not.
It births from tragedy; it births from fate.
As sure as the rising sun, as certain as the waning twilight.
They run, they hide, they cover their eyes.
Tried as they might, tried as they don’t,
It arrives all the same.
Once upon a time,
whisked to a faraway land.
Paradise to some,
Hell to I.
Chased by demons and encroaching void,
flailing in the sea with no support.
A light descends, a hand reaches.
The beginning of the end.
Time flies like a storm.
The light illuminates the path.
But drowning, a hand helps not,
but to plunge another into the sea.
It emerges, it consumes.
And the Lord sings to float,
but the drowned sinks further,
with nary a hope.
Forgives, it does not.
Move on, it cannot.
Forever accountable, it claims.
Forever cursed, it says.
The sea remains dark,
but the rafts of planks,
held the submerged up.
Day by day, night by night,
the storm fades, the cloud parts.
The sun rises, the sea calms,
but the eyes remain.
Arrives again, it always will.
Different face, different name.
But ready, shall one who sailed.
and sings the songs of the past that failed.
Be wary, be kind.
Be the one who minds.
For even the gods won’t know,
where it will go.