Stars

My broken hopes

scatter out across the nighttime horizon

like stars, or broken glass,

glimmering, reflecting the lights of a thousand cars,

the busy city turned

kaleidoscopic and sharp.

The reckless late night walks, wrecked

cars like seasoning for these broken streets,

over there is where your mother used to buy you sweets

but now the store is gone, burned to ash and turned into

confetti by a gentle breeze.

You probably breathed it in

without realising, the air density going unnoticed like

the memory creeping up on you with cold hands, quite unlike the feeling when your flat window cracks open in the Summer

and you bathe in the coolness lying on your unwashed bed,

content.

Can it be that it was all so simple then?

Every daunting issue now seems so unspecial, so momentary

but then felt like facing the crushing wave of a tsunami,

the weight gradually accruing until now it

crushes you

and smudges out any of the good you think you see,

the love depletes, admitting defeat,

and the stars vanish again

into the cold blue of the endless sky,

these tired eyes

watch the view floating by

afraid to close,

afraid of time,

still scarred by how easily it tore apart

the past.