Shards

Here amid the ghosts
and scattered leaves
I watch
numb
as shards of my life
flitter in the warm wind
float
softly to heaven
and vanish

Taking with them what remains of me.

I have stomped on the ashes
I have scattered the bones
I have ground the remains beneath my heel
until nothing is left but
empty and silent
my soul
empty and silent
watching
Ready for the next journey,
the next odyssey.

These silver shards, razor sharp,
flicker on the breeze
in the twilight
drifting, fluttering, going
wherever
lost and fragmented dreams go.

If I could capture just one of them,
hold it in my open palm one instant,
and withstand the pain
as it slices my hand to the bone
(as it will inevitably do because
it must)
bloody and strafed,
my hand would hold
for that one moment
my life,
and
I might once more understand.

But I cannot.

In the thickening evening,
the last glistening shards meander skyward,
and I turn,
I who have created them by destroying myself,
and join the other ghosts
in the endless
drifting
wind.

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