Broken Moon Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

The moon splintered the night,
that dark night so many moons ago
when time and trouble merged
along the coastal plain of trust and tears.

Plumes of smoke rose in the distance
as she stood in the doorway of fate,
wondering where the spinning wheels
took him as he turned the bend.

The bleak night promised her nothing.
After all, she was a broken promise herself,
dust and dim commingled in her black dress,
a dress of betrayal and dangling dreams.

Little did she know that she'd wear it again,
silent as the stone that had become of her heart,
his feet pointed east in eternal retreat,
while his two daughters stood beside him.

His best friend crept into their home
as he had crept into her bed, slithering like a snake.
Petals fell to the floor, the petals of tears,
the tears of two daughters turned to spine.

After all, they were the backbone of his legacy,
his beautiful sorrow spun in their youth,
a dark medley of time disconsolate,
a cold rain on the nape of night's narrow neck.

They are left with the moon, weeping,
his absence falling from the sky
as a spray of stars shimmers, reflected
in the black tide, the grief of time.

The darkness drips in damp corners,
trickling down the curve of her frown
as she recounts that night, that dark night,
when he discovered her broken moon.

It splintered his heart, pierced his soul,
left him mangled beneath that old oak
among the corpse of his metal car.
He planted himself toward the sun.

His daughters grew taller, two candles,
burned out of her life with a trace of smoke.
She wept as they fled into the dream of the dawn,
leaving her to her darkness, her broken moon.

The pale lace of her complexion trembled
in the whisper of wind that was her shame.
She could never admit that she was wrong;
and for this, they are gone.

She stood in the doorway of decision
and gave nothing, took her good-bye
and shoved it into the pocket of hate,
slamming the door against herself.

She could warm a man's bed but never her heart.

Now she sleeps alone, no matter whom is beside her,
an empty soul that no longer believes in fulfillment.
She doesn't hear the hoot of the owl in the night,
doesn't care for the wisdom that comes with age.

And I'm her daughter...

A leaf blowing in the wind, that once fell upon her,
that she quickly brushed away without notice.

And I'm her legacy...

I can only say that I think I deserved better.

She made a promise to honor and cherish.
Why couldn't that have been enough?
Trapped between two panes of broken glass,
I see holes in the past and holes in the future.

A cold wind blows through me, a moonbeam
shining a light on the dark of my past,
a place where I hug the silence in retrospect,
contemplating the certainty of what will never be.

The deepest loss is wed with infidelity,
where black night straddles her dark sin,
and lowers her skirt over the sun.
The heat of her breath burns the night.

There's a pulse in her wrist but no beat in her heart.

Shall I blame it on the moon hanging in the sky?
Does one blame a mirror for itself being broken?
I don't know; it is what it is... broken,
a shattered reminder of what should have been,
and minute reflections of what will never be.