VERSE | THE SHADES OF LONELINESS

I’ve seen the colours of loneliness
I’ve seen their moldering faces
I’ve seen them fill the keening voids 
Of our broken, scattered places.
It’s the grey of the sky just before it descends
In blinding cascades 
Of granite and slate 
While waiting for that one special friend of the heart 
Who’s gone an infinite distance apart.
Gone forever; not coming back.
It’s the darkening shades of smoke and ash
Stifling and choking.  It’s emotional whiplash.

It’s the curdled russet and clotted yellow 
Of dying leaves
Still on the trees.
It’s the hope that once blossomed,
Now just a vanishing dream;
Like fading delusions;
And fractured illusions.
Like wasting ivy, still clinging  tightly 
To the mottled, purple-bruised spaces within.

It’s the decayed red of old blood 
That has flowed and then congealed 
From scarred old wounds 
In the fallow fields 
Of the innermost corners of your being.
It’s the throbbing new cuts of remembrance-pain 
That sear you with their scarlet heat
Scorching your insides until there remain
Only the rust-dripping embers of defeat.

It’s these mottled hues and grainy textures 
Of mangled hearts and hurting souls 
Its the piercing, stinging, strangling tightness 
In the pit of the stomach; in the back of the throat.
In the end, it is all of this 
That make up the tinctures of loneliness 
That fill up all our sad and desolate spaces.