I had become acquainted
with unseeing eyes that still saw
too much. The cloister of a cocoon
meant to preserve all that remained

after the fire coursed through, crying.
The heaviness of stories I had clung to
like the hand of a parent who had
already slipped away and failed

to realize the child who saw beyond
the mirage, who hoped against hope
for even an artificial light to provide
warmth, to somehow be unveiled

as the source to begin with. Was I still
wandering into a borrowed tomb,
unable to discern these times, seasons
that ushered in the fragile new growth

when all I'd known was decay? Carry
that weight and leave the shell. Let
the molten fragments be found
by the next unsuspecting stranger

eagerly awaiting new rains. I had been
steeped too long in the deluge of death
only to shrink from the only true light
that could heal those deepest parts

of my being, of those stories I wished
weren't mine to hold. Still, the flicker illuminated all they had wanted to keep me from knowing all along.