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Creative Scholarship
DeSouza
My pointed words fall on your deaf ears,
Dulled by your silent shield of hope,
How is it not worn down
By the winter winds, the torrents of spring
How has the rust not rusted you out, too?
Those metal tags dangling like
Some ancient queen’s forgotten earrings,
The jewels of love left to rot in the sunshine
Yet,
Still
I continue to watch that devil-grass
Yellowed with age,
Forever rising,
Clinging and climbing up
Around your thin, sockless feet-
Blistered by wind, by the summer’s heat,
Swollen with flood and rain,
Calluses hardened by time and pain.
You’re holding onto something
That’s really nothing
But you wish it to be all the same,
And etched upon your lips and in that hollow
Space beneath your throat
Are the inkless words you painstakingly wrote:
His long-lost remembered name-
The sun kisses the moon
And again all too soon,
Your shadow floats on down the road.
I see in your eyes
That nothing and that something
And silently wish your pain away,
As sky blue turns to black then into gray
I know that your shadow will always stay
Carved upon that road in dust and blood and hope.
“Wake up, wake up,
And go to sleep,” I whisper
As you slowly dissolve in front of me
Because you kept the past
In your pocket and his picture
In your golden locket
Lying against your sunken chest
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