While Love Lies... Poem by Aaron Christiansen

One tear burns the eye like acid
when you have one foot in the grave
and smoke is rising from a pyre
of what was once a house and home
to children playing secret games.

You wouldn't understand
how you were once in me
buried deep like pirate's treasure
how priceless, those moments we shared alone
when a touch, a glance, a smile
could change the world forever

One tear is not enough
to snuff, quench, drown a fire
hotter than the stars that burned the soft nights
of those gentle times
where skeletal framewworks clothed in breath
once tore the silence of winter
into a thousand glowing splinters
that banished the darkness for awhile
where the pale haunting that pierces flesh with need
became a barbed quill too tender to touch
clutching at falling words
that caressed lips like autumn leaves,
then resolved into a minor chord
suspended in the hearts of innocence

One tear burns the eye like acid
when you have one foot in the grave
and you're staring down the barrel of a gun
called mortality and there's nothing left
but the burning in your head
and an empty shell of mere existence