The poet in black does not weep.

Those are not tears dripping from the end of her pencil.

They are only words.

She is trying to capture him in graphite,
dash the essence of him upon the page before he goes.

She casts a pretty spell upon the white void,
conducting her linguistic army in a self-indulgent symphony,
a musical commentary on this parched flood,
a snapshot of the strained beauty of her grief.

She paints herself the tortured artist and
deep down, where the sticky shadows lick at the corners
of her vacant heart,
she likes it.

While her disdainful gaze is turned so resolutely inward,
she does not have to look out upon the world
that could not hold him.

Written by Alison V. King – South Wales, UK