Time slips through the spaces between
dreams and inhibitions.
Instants turn to ages as we sleep.
Frost weaves icy webs along the bedroom windowpanes,
casting a gray pallor across once-golden meadows
and the limbs and branches of trees
upon which we hung our most secret prayers.
Lamplight fades into dark obscurity.
Shadows lose definition
and retreat into the shoes of an old man’s shuffling gait.
He gestures with tremulous hands toward the dwindling glow,
shoulders bent and bowed beneath the weight of unmet expectations
and the certitude of an obsolescence
far more terrible than the grave.
Memories come alive in the twilight hour.
Ghosts of lovers and ambitions buried side by side
become one, a single encompassing remorse,
a cry of lamentation which lingers
long after the last echoes of the elegy have faded.
‘I remember,’ he cries
‘I remember, and I regret.’
Justin Permenter is a writer of poetry and fiction from Denton, Texas. Whenever he is not writing– which, admittedly, is far too often– he works undercover as a Senior Immigration Advisor at the University of North Texas. He holds a B.A. in Russian from Baylor University and a Master’s of International Affairs from the Bush School at Texas A&M.
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