:: Faded ::

I wish I could be
Dislodged from you
Your history
Your empyrean fiction of fatherhood.

Your pain - a scimitar unsheathed -
Is a weary weapon
Is a treacherous echo
Is a blighting bite of regret.

You wish you could be
Dislodged from us
Our reality
Our feral truth of your faded
Dreams.

Your pain - a gale unleashed -
Is a calamitous wind,
Is a tragic chorus,
Is a crippling cry of regret.

***

I heard myself as I spoke to S - my voice low, laced with a subdued note that perhaps hadn't always been there. My laughter feels strangled. In the rearview mirror, my eyes looked oddly flat. I could throw on a smile like a switch - I know it can dazzle with fluorescent efficiency - but today I am vapid and dead. Still, it's not unhappiness. It's an old disease with new symptoms, and I just need to force it into remission the way I have done, so many times before.

What am I saying? I am a rivulet of verbosity today.