Your words are frightening
but the silence that ensues is worse –
lonely, but for the mirage of a spectre,
silent, but for its lamenting cry.
And it never really took me by surprise,
this fate that I had long-ago resigned to;
a fate not ordained by any god, but worse –
thrust upon me by someone I could not displease.
I am the perpetrator, the guilty, the shy,
hanging on by a feeble thread of a rope
that ought to have snapped, but oh!
the hope of finding mercy in your eyes keeps it still –
taught and strained, but still.
Yet there is no mercy in your eyes
until the thunder rolls by and
streaks the clouds with fawning drums;
afterward, you flee suddenly at the sight
of daffodil-speckled fields
and primroses bursting in the air.
But during the storm – how you shook!
and wildly declared a fallacy.