The Relentless Rest

The girl’s shiny charcoal shoes click up the steps
Though her heels sink into the autumn mush
The mahogany door creaks open upon a ginger push

She is only here to see an old friend
This is where they told her their journey ends

In the Victorian house with peeling paint
In the little bed she sees where he lay
On a pillow white as the bark of willow
The amber light softly dancing on his hair’s golden hay

When she calls out,
Her name he does not say true
His eyes do not flicker open
To reveal twin pools of blue

He does not reach out to touch her
But if she truly were that bold
She would find
That his hands are stiff and cold

Casting her into the darkening blur
Liquid glass begins to pool
Seeping out the ledges of her eyes
When she knows that she has been fooled

Down the pane of her face rolls salty rain,
Washing away the fog
Revealing repressed pain
Till everything before her became clear

Under his lashes they had sewn his eyelids closed
Suffused through the room was the smell of sickly rose
He was not lying in the bed of his room
But in the cold casket that was to be his tomb

He was not asleep
But in the relentless rest
She could only weep
And pray that the shovels
Bury him deep