without hindrance
your eyes weep, remembering,
and endless in their stream your tears flood
the cool corners of your downturned lips
and my image fades from black to grey
in the melodramatic fashion
of a soldier being laid to rest
by a woman who sent away a boy
and was returned the humourless body of a man
whose battles she could not know.
you would not, you could not, you should not
let me know you.
and the guilt in my eyes falls triumphantly all around you and i
lighting the trail of mourning i’ve so recently discovered
you die behind the silencing parapets of my past.