Shards Of Darkness, Fragments Of Light Poem by Jeprox G. Lingamen

1.
can't remember the day
I stopped seeing you in the
mirror when I looked to see
what I am, how I am, whether
I'm scared or just alone,
confused, condemned, or free

I don't see you anymore in
the tree of cracks branching
out across the polished glass
beneath my cut fingertips, forever
tracing, feeling for something
deeper than the pain that
started all this soul-seeking

you ceased to be the hue of
my irises that give away my
heart, undoubtedly as the colors
of the sea, bending light, taunting
skies, mimicking heartbreak, or
how scars turn dull as Time frees them
from pain but not recollection,
sensation but not existence

2.
the heart is a moonray-threaded guitar
the gossamery light vanishing at our fingers
atremble with despair-or is it wistfulness?
it's hard to tell which precedes the other
-to play our music while we still know it

3.
the world from Aisle Seat 25
was Ennui ebbing into Oblivion
my fortress was Indifference
my suicide pill, Sleep

then I saw you walking toward me
lips pursed like a crimson peapod
protecting the soft wordgrains within

what were you truly afraid of,
the heart they might pollinate?

didn't you think I might be afraid too,
of my inner sun seeking your deepest
shadows, like thirst to imagined oases
how I might not let go of something, akin
to gravity binding people who are too
caught up in their apocalyptic crises,
their well-earned righteous pride to care?

still, I felt our plane's ascent
to the clouds, undermining
the pull of the earth, the pull
of you to me, determined to
take us to our destination where
we'll whisper to each other farewell
(masking the weight in our guts
dragging us down with a shared
smile that draws the final line
infinite, unperturbed, cutting
like a mute but unrelenting horizon)
then disappear from each other's destiny

4.
happiness breaks anew
with each raindrop's goodbye kiss
the way some goodbyes break us sometimes
how words hanging from one's tongue are
better left unsaid, leaving the mouth
and the tunnels to the heart dry as
dead streams, as death unmourned

5.
this quiet
cradled like
a stoic sun
setting
in the valley
of the heart

cannot last

a swarm of memories raging
to be seen, heard, and felt
like echo-dependent bats
shall take over, their gossip
will ricochet in the secret
chambers that won't cave in,
won't ever go away, inside

6.
notice these fingers resting
tranquil but cold, stubborn
on a white-lettered keypad
how the ring-fingertip absorbs
the N-nothing there but ceramic
unfeeling, the spacebar unyielding
beneath my weightless thumbprint
(representing my uniqueness
all that I am that isn't in others-
see how even that isn't enough)
my thoughts punctuated, faltering,
leaving me here, trapped in my inertia,
in my wild but moored imagination,
my inability to write on, to recognize
the futility of shaping otherworlds out
of these rogue letters closing in on me,
displacing air, their shadows growing,
heavy, like giant cell doors resigned to
carry out their cruel duties in silence

I hate not knowing why
in my mind your name
writes itself, like billowing
smoke out of a mighty dragon
that drank an ocean of tears
in a show of ruthless despair

7.
the heart in your hand is not my heart
it holds a darkness that isn't what I have

the darkness I know takes no form,
neither matter nor space

the Time it knows spins no planets,
arranges no stars, burns no sun

I regret knowing what you mean when you said
light and darkness have a way of tearing one apart

8.
how does light and darkness differ
from love and indifference? tell me,

when I said I love you, did I not bear
your apathy as I have borne night

after night of self-hate, as if one is
simply the offspring of another like

syllables worded into a prophecy of hope
that doesn't stop the violence in the Now?

9.
I know what it's like to hate
words you cannot call your own-
hate how there aren't words
brave and committed to describe
the kind of exile that you need

I had no recollection of going in,
but darkness and light, in massive
swirls, like a storming luminous
desert seen only by the passing night
I remember, as vividly as the blackness
of the lines in your last e-mail to me
that said you don't want me anymore

how it killed the only growing
sun in my already dead sky

now I'm going out

10.
dreary, how confusing it is
to know which hurts the more:
counting the heartshards left
behind in the space that once was
the meeting point of our drifting
souls-now only memories linger
there-or realizing that some pieces
are irrevocably missing like un-
fathomable holes where stars in
perfect constellations used to
twinkle bright and whole

I named every shard after you
a very personal christening
before a very final burial

11.

this is how freedom should feel
my arms like wings on their first flight
my words, bold and strong and willful
my heart, my own, refracting light

A prized gem on fire