Friday 22 April 2022

Emptiness

by Nick Gisburne



Amorphous, shuffling horrors, stripped of speech,
Enact a palsied pantomime of grief.
Disfigured not-quite-fingers stretch and reach.
They fold and fall, each hand a withered leaf.
Psychosis is the curse on which they feed.
Its burden presses, heavy, in my head.
With light extinguished, something foul has freed
The agony of emptiness instead.
No friend was ever cherished more than she.
Without her there is only, ever, pain.
While nightmare shapes and shades are all I see,
I find no twist of reason to remain.
    Her voice would beg me, dare me, to forget.
    Perhaps I will not pull the trigger. Yet.