AFTER THE LIGHT HAS GONE

It becomes easier when the light

has faded

and darkness falls.

It is easier,

in the dark,

to live.

Yet the knowledge, the memories,

they stay there,

in the mind -

always present.

Not shouting, yet

talking, whispering, crying.

In voices lost,

in voices lost

because you were not

worthy of them

that depended

on you.

They who made

their leap of faith,

those who expected,

those who deserved

after decades

of sacrificial love

a modicum of what they gave

to you, year
after year after year,

to you who failed,

who failed them all.

And your own voice

among the others,

self-pitying, crying,

pleading, pathetically.

No longer screaming,

but whispering, the weakling,

in the dark in which

you hide from the pale light,

pale and feeble light

like the blood in your veins,

like the brittle moral spine

long ago broken,

you, long ago broken,

hiding in the dark

from them who
you betrayed.

06.12.2019