A Promise Made To Ghosts

Fingers traced the words of,

The blood song etched on the walls.

The grandfather clock’s face was a thousand splinters,

Yet it hushed out a lullaby of “tick-tock”.

A memory –

Strong hands winding the gears.

A man whose back was,

Straighter than the pendulum,

Always bending, never breaking.

The night sand laboriously,

Of broken bones, broken hearts, broken dreams.

Weary eyes leaked out stories,

Into brine-stained pillows, always soaking.

A memory –

“Shut your eyes, child.”

A tender caress, softer than kisses.

Stories of the past, stories of the future,

Never of the present.

Four faces smiled out at me,

Jailed behind a broken glass.

Their ghosts rose up, as if to mock me,

“We’re full of life, how can we die?”

A memory –

One. Two. Three.

The bed rocked gently to the rhythm of the guns.

Pinkie curled around pinkie,

As two little hearts beat as one.

Death left behind souvenirs,

Token of a past life littered,

A doll here, a ball there.

Dust-caked and abandoned.

A memory –

A little boy sat on his father’s lap,

Proud and unafraid.

The woman weaved jasmine into,

Her little girl’s thick hair.

The sky groaned under the weight of,

Prayers it had received,

The rain scribbled consolation on my window,

Too little, too late?

A promise –

The guilt of the survivor,

Shall not wreck me,

Only the hope lives,

Of dreams about to take flight.