The shackles, rusted and decayed,
Dropped shattered to the ground.
The ground, the cold, stone floor,
Chilled by the draft of a new dawn.

The old memories of sunlight and starlight
Blend and meld into this wintery awakening.
I’ve opened my eyes from the brightest dream,
Into the darkness of solitude.

I am scared, and sorely afraid.
Slowly, but surely overwhelmed by the magnitude
Of possiblity and a virgin track.
Oh wander not, hapless heart!

Rolling hills of grass and heather,
A bald head of granite on one hill,
And grand-fatherly white of sheep on the next.

Oh dampness, and the cold.
Rain, rain, it ever rains here.
Sometimes harsh, sometimes gentle as a lover’s kiss.

Oh land of my heart’s yearning!,
But not of my flesh’s belonging,
Stay green and young in my soul.

I don’t really know what to say. So stark, so grim a version of how this little film played out in my mind, in my heart, in my beliefs and in my soul.

Has it really come to this?

I’m losing my love, my spirit, my humanity.

I may become nothing more than empty virulence and being. I am sorely afraid. Ironic. So afraid. so filled with fear, of becoming something and someone I used to want to be with all my heart.

I’ve lost you. I’ve lost me. I’m holding on, and walking forward one step at a time. Just trudging along, as you told me you were, so long ago. I gave you my all, and then some. And now I have nothing left for me. Running on fumes and a near empty tank of air and pride. Hot air, as it were.

Regret burns. A younger me, filled with more naivette than the one I am now, if it is believable, once promised that I’d never be in a situation or condition of such intense regret. Life’s like that. It ignores whatever you want, whatever you hope to achieve, and deals gruel on your empty plate, to make do with it what you will.

I am now the enemy, I am. Where once I was a good friend, a best friend, a loved one, a beloved. Now, I stand before you as someone to avoid. To shun, to separate from, to be apart.

I bathed in the blood of my wounds, bleeding hurt and pain. I thought I knew pain. I though pain was a familiar. I was sincerely wrong. So very wrong. Pain had a new face that day.

So, trudge I shall.