requiem
2024, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
I love you like the earth—even when you are broken, battered, bruised.
I still love you like the earth—resilient even when tattered hands find solace upon your temple. You endure all that has been cast upon you, hazy mind, yet you give what you can. Sweet, dripping fruit even when the cold threatens to whisk you away, turn you to nothing—a sign of your love. Body aching, skin screaming, you weep silently like a child holding onto a hand that will never see life again. Dry skin brings conflagration upon your mind even your tears cannot extinguish it, naked you stand, ready to face it all. The monsters stand before you, watch you fall, dismiss you, abasing, step on you like a creaky floorboard not yet replaced, never fixed but they bemoan. If you are the old wavering house, then they stand to be the owners. Resolute, but to them, you have already served its purpose, you are nothing but a tool to them as long as they live. The tortured ballerina—prayers dance off your tongue like you were Tchaikovsky. Your prayers are not ignored, the masses now hear you. Training Cechetti, we see your bones twisting, straining, stretching. The pain you held within for so long, it all comes undone. The opaque window finally opens, spreading it to those who watched and stared. Apologies fall from your lips but no more, you tried to save us from yourself. Like a broken wine glass, consequences you stain apologetically. It was not you who tipped it; you cannot be at blame. Summer continues relinquishing its reign, taunting winter, whose rule began to wane. Hurricanes disparage our homes, could things ever be the same? Experiences you gave me, blocking off the amorous sea. They still meant nothing, if it weren’t you, I couldn’t see. I stand now, kneeling before you.
I will always love you like the earth—even when it hurts, I vow now to protect you, even with no hue.