Direction sense lost in the dark,
we’re seeking.
Thunder pounding
and strikes light the pitch.
How can we cause such sorrow?
Why is there the fallen?
Flaccid limbs give way to the earth
red.
Haven’t we learned from the battles before?
Gone the towers into rubble.
Lost the triumphant for being
conditioned to believe they are
(we are).
Pitch path traveled by day
paved red and the rubble with flesh
makes for an uneasy step.
Pounding more
crumbling still
cries dim a night darkness
for some turns green.
Impaled by guilt and shrapnel
restless rests
and breath slows.
Big sky seeming so lonely as if
to draw calm.
Strikes staggered off to the
distance,
not my perimeter.
Will the vortex swallow us tonight?
Lost.
I shutter to think.
I close my eyes.
Heavy with sorrow
my heart pumps slower.
Caught in my own whir of
circles I’ve gone nowhere.
Now where?
My eyes swell to glass
and the pin holes of light
that were left in the sky
are now disappearing from
the East.
The smell of sulfurs in the air
and all the stars seem to
have been taken.
Can you remember playing in the park
when you were young?
Can I remember playful sounds
of my childhood friends I’ve
not seen since?
Remember the innocence
in each waking hour?
Remember the silence
before casting off to sleep?
This silence is not the
same.
Eyes wide open
lost in pitch
and the pounding is
thunderously close.
Time elapsed
and my memories
cascade forward
as my emotions squeeze
the last tear.
There is no other source of light.
There is no comforting sound.
There is no touch to bring me calm.
There is no hero to charge forward.
This is the piercing sound
of silence.
Daniel Molina