ALONE AGAIN

By J.D. Scève

You have shown me what devastation means,

It was not in the tears stopping at my lips,

Or the days spent in absence.

Nor is it in the lacerations you cut into my heart,

where I believed your memory would grow. Perhaps

into a field of tulips or birdsong so sweet.

No, it is how you made me forget colour.

My fingertips trace the wallpaper. Sluggish

with nails half-chewed from dismay.

The world churns to an abstract hell of grey.

Mother Nature damned to monotone.

You said my irises of blue were like frozen lakes,

where you would skate your hazel in them.

The aurora leeches from the sky as the sun dies.

Petals like parchment break off in quaint whisper.

And you have left me in the dark once again.

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