Walking Dead

I dress in the shadows of the day

Whose death is worn upon my sleeve

She breathes, no more, eyes closed

A decade on the floor, the light screams

Against her bare skin, the sedative scent

Of her perfume, the precious few molecules

Left of her, a snare that holds me here

In tears, these years fade so quickly

A dozen unmarked calendars hung on

A single overburdened nail

She rests in the grave now

And I am enslaved, powerless to escape

Home, whose letters once brought her lips to mine

Now form a curse of bitter breath

Beneath the filter of a cigarette

Burnt beyond the stale tobacco

I taste only the Jack Daniels, and the blood of a split lip

The love and the guilt trip, who led me down

So many beautiful paths, now lay me down to death

Who stubbornly refuses my advances

I thrust myself unwilling into each new moment

Unable to resist the fables she left

To rot inside my skin, the decomposure of what once was

Now the overexposure of what is, the open sore of regret

Stings at each movement of the clock

How could I live, bearing so much on my shoulders

How dare I grow older, as she grows colder

In the grave, these days, they were meant for suffering

Some debt unpaid, that separated me

From the remains of my dreams

A bed of wood and earth, where I should be sleeping

Next to her, instead I'm left with only

Words, memories, hurt, and a world kept moving

By a shovel full of dreams, tossed into the furnace

I am the dozen empty cars pulled

By a train that's always leaving, never seeing

A destination, there are no reperations

For a heart vacated so completely

As to be torn from the chest still beating

And drowned in a sea of grief.