Mourning Words

By Natasha B.

the words I found littering your antiquated gutter

famished candelabras whispering their cryptic pleas

daring to hope for restful nights under the amorous gaze

of Artemis, but in the wake of scholars’ long forgotten scrolls,

vignettes of color amongst the world’s monochrome tidings

so far departed the shades appear foreign to you.

look, I pray, open your eyes to the translations

that fill this punctuated globe. snow falls across every

barren teeming scene, yet through the fading glaze

of spiraling flakes, fragments stitched together by affinity,

rainbow rays cut between each Calliope isle,

dolloped warmth amid the winter cold.

by this I mean you do not face your storm alone.

the pain of centuries lies behind you, amidst which

ancient philosophers scattered seeds of wisdom

brazed by crippling chaos, empires rising and clashing

like the calm and calamity of uncontainable oceans.

yet sown and reaped, the seeds bore beauty above the bitterness,

still. from the moment the chromosomes aligned

in an utterly random fashion, life was destined for entropy.

each time you rediscover, your heart caves a mountain deeper

but did Homer not know, too? did Virgil not weep?

as I kneel here in the gutter, I pluck the mourning words

from the alluvial you have unwittingly bypassed

and dare lift them within your reach.

_____ ____ ___ __ _

Natasha Bredle is an emerging young writer whose work is featured or is forthcoming in Second Chance Lit, Aster Lit, and The Aurora Journal, among others. Perspectives on mental health and ponderings about the emotional capacity of human beings tend to occupy her headspace. She exists on instagram @natasha_bredle