Comfort

Long ribbons of suffering
hang on a wire.
One falls off,
wraps around her head
like a taut bandana, and
drips into her heart
dissolving peace and love
into bitterness.

She walks on brittle springtime ice,
and hovers in shadows like a ghost
wearing a silk housecoat and dirty slippers.
She embraces betrayal, the empty slope
of abandonment, and the chill of death
in the hollow of her borderline.
Is this her legacy to herself?
A clear night sky without stars
is just a void.

She doesn’t see the iron edge
of her own heartache.
Her soul is a burning tree with leaves
flashing, then caught in a hot wind
as brief embers of her lost opened mind.

She seeks the comfort of cool maples and meadows,
quiet clouds in the dappled blue sky.
But when she shuts her eyes
she’s absorbed in the fiery inner noise
of an endless chasm of suffering.

How can she be comforted, then?
To be wherever she is, to cut
the wide space between our dismay,
and a barren comparison
with her infinite dark.

She has no place for a dream of comfort.
So, we must sit nearby, level with her eyes,
and hope there’s a glint of emerald flares
of daylight in the distance.