A Thousand Pasts

Grieving for past selves

whose potentials you couldn’t meet,

titans groan deep in the skies.

Their echoes

shake the resting puddles in the streets.

Search for shelter

from those shattering shoes,

find the buildings not yet crumbled

not yet destroyed or occupied by ghouls,

the quietest pockets, the silent pieces of the puzzle.

Hollow chests recede and expand,

broken, battered,

bleeding hands,

futures burnt, ashes

scattered,

breezing through

lost, distant lands,

you dream what could’ve been each night

and wake up troubled by what little still can be,

free by night deep in Brazil

liberated, charcoal wingspan.

Soar above this city and see it,

the ghosts numerous, ever-multiplying,

your body a shell you’d do best to forget

left behind,

no more fighting, then.

Drifting,

drifting

on thin wings of desire,

which stretch towards the possibilities of past,

grazing them softly,

conjuring the what-if,

then leaving you

alone

in your dark

to compare the two,

the three,

the thousand different

yous you know you could have been,

inevitably mourning every other

broken pallbearer,

those with no strength left to lift,

and taking for granted

this one you still have a hold on

while you hear the death march

pass outside,

refusing to wait

for the rain to pass.