2010-02-25 – Corrosion of the Soul


It's a thing that corrodes the soul
   when the person you love the most in the world
has decided that you are wrong
   and unforgivable.

I sit quietly with music playing in my headphones
   on a park bench
with the willow trees swaying
   and people and their dogs running and walking by.

A sort of peace fills me
   as the wind talks to my skin
and George Winston's music fills my mind
   but I'm empty and most of me is gone.

Corroded, bleached, driven down, hammered into absence.

I think, "What am I interested in?   What's different?"
   and nothing responds.
      The one with the passions has gone.

Having the one you love most in the world
   feel this way about you
breaks the mirror in which you have seen yourself
   and felt loved.

And then there is the empty silence and your stomach.

In the sky, an enormous cloud with shafts of sunlight pouring through it
   and a bird winging its way across the tableaux
      but my stomach says to fear everything.

It is good that I'm not an insecure person
   with deep self-esteem issues
or I would have crumbled before this
   corrosion and disdain long ago.

But, it's faded me
   and crawls about in my stomach
and leaves me without ambitions
   or dreams.

25Feb10
gallagher

— Copyright 1965-2010 by Dennis Gallagher —

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