lost girl and the dawn light 13/08

like every other morning
it is not his hands that wake her
but the thought of coffee grounds -
coffee grounds, and the first cigarette of the day
to make bearable the hours in obligation
of grieving for him.
like every other morning
her pillowcase is damp when she awakens,
her mouth in a tortured crescent;
perhaps she has relived
loss in her sleep.
she had not thought
that she had slept. 

outside, the sky is unbridled,
veined with blood of gold and pink
against the pale blue skin of 
ripening day. 
the sun she hardly sees,
obscured like a golden eye
by the skeletal silhouettes
of the trees. 

it has been a while since she stepped outside.
outside is the passage of time;
she will not reconcile herself
with that which kills her. 

happiness is too much to ask, even 
on account of a spring morning
where the air is diffused with 
the tender scent of summer rain,
when the wind seems to ache 
rather than blow, and fall like petals
against her cheeks. and yet 
the pattering of the last dregs 
of nighttime rain; the coolness
underfoot; the dew-laced 
breeze; the peaceful
fluttering of the leaves, filtering
the dawning sunlight into
descending wings of smarting gold -
here she can feel something nearing
contentment, acceptance, 
remedy. 

when she stands 
the breeze has fallen in whispers
at her feet, and the sun has risen
in the sky. the hues which had harmonised
so beautifully fade into the day;
birdsong is displaced, not unpleasantly,
by the timbre of awakening voices,
the day's infantile early cries. 

today perhaps she will walk again, or read again,
or write again. she has not held a pen in a while:
there's fear in trying to consign her heart
to paper. in the sunrise
she feels fearless. 

she had thought that her happiness
lay in him, or in thoughts of him.
perhaps, she thinks, as her skin 
kisses goodbye to the last dregs of sunrise,
it is in breaking, and 
it is in being able to rebuild.
it is in the loss of faith, and
it is in redemption.
it is in falling, and then
it is in rising
in breathy gold
over the horizon.