A silhouette merging with the unknown-
all that is left is your breath in the cold air
as you exhale in slow motion.
I speak in shadows,
you respond with specters of light,
haunting every word-
making sense of it all;
I choose to live in the now,
but if you whisper in my ear
I will take decades to figure out
why you chose to disappear
that day
when I ran down the hallway-
gargoyles staring from above-
for a second I thought I could hear
another set of footsteps
under a different weight
even after I accepted your longing
for the netherworld.
The statues were grotesque,
threatening, demon-like in thunder and lightning,
and still, I hoped that hallway would never end
just so I could hear the sounds again and again
and convince myself they weren’t merely
echoes of my footsteps into the unknown.