Poems of Pain and Solitude

Chapter 6: pictures in a golden frame

Never walk on a ledge if you don't know what goes beyond it:

This was the warning my mother gave me when I was little,

But I took no heed of it as it seemed like such foolish advice.

Now I know what she meant. She meant:

Don't take the risk of falling if you don't know where you'll crash.

I'm writing in the piano room again.

But tonight, there is nothing.

I stare at the blank page.

And it stares back, full of vacancy.

The pen seems like a breakable stick in my hand.

I'm a blank page. The blank page is me.

It doesn't know where to go.

It doesn't know how to fill itself,

With something that should bring it contentment.

I'm empty. How is emptiness so heavy?

It's midnight, the time where the clock stops ticking. Dead.

I light a candle, and its light reflects pallor up on my face,

I look around and I can feel my past ghosts haunting me.

The room is brimming with overflowing emotion, 

There's a lingering tension and heaviness, weighing down.

The silence couldn't quite be louder.

I can hear the tears that were once dropped in this room.

I can see the screams that were once freed in this room.

I can feel the shadows that were once dancing in this room.

This room, each corner and crevice, is a memory.

The crack in the wall, I do recall the scent you left behind,

When you walked past me.

Can you feel the difference in the air tonight, love?

Can you see how the silence echoes differently?

Can you feel it like I can?

It fell over last night.

I can hear the heartbeat of this room.

A heartbeat that used to feel alive,

Now blooming in an empty graveyard.

How can a heartbeat be so... dead?

Familiarity is hanging down in this rooms,

Lit by sparkling crescent moons.

The curtains are parted, light peeking through

To trace curved shadows on the floor,

And suddenly I am dancing with them.

Music fills my mind, resonating in an empty void,

I can feel your touch all over me,

Soft like a morning spring breeze,

Stroking my senses in such delicacy and secrecy

That this impossibility makes it all too beautiful.

Waltzing around the room to a minor tune,

Melancholia is masking the darkness that's clouding the room,

A melody so whimsical that its floating

In frail invisible wisps,

Dancing like our forbidden lullabies.

I'm breathless,

Our footsteps are echoing in this stolen silence,

Your presence is enfolding me in your cold arms.

And this time, it's not home.

It's dangerously irresistible.

The music stops.

I look in the reflection of the glass,

But you're not here.

I'm alone,

In this dark piano room.

Where are you?

I can still feel you all around,

I am breathing,

But I am not alive.

Where are you?

And the silence, ringing,

With every word that's never been told.

When I sit back down to the desk,

I write:

"Were you ever real?"

I dance alone,

Until I am nothing but a picture in a golden frame.

A picture, a scene frozen in the past,

Captured in one click, 

Frozen behind this golden frame that sits on my desk.

A moment in time,

Frozen behind glass.

That's all I am to you,

That's all I ever was,

And all I will ever be.