Emptiness Poem by Val Morehouse

You touch me and taste pain,
a salt lake
beached and betrayed
by its beginning.

We are divided
by the thinness of this beach,
where our footprints shrink as if
hiding a guilt within them.

Each thought is marred by departure:
your white smile breaking away,
the set our your wave on the sky
are like artifacts to me.

Even now one sail heaves
in bewilderment over
the tempest we were
always trying to cross.

And the birds bring messages
to shatter on the pavement
at my feet, where the pieces
bleach and cast up

Like your face in the
emptiness; and I
let you walk away
dry-eyed and without a sound.