I just discovered this site, Poets Anonymous Ink, and while browsing their website, I discovered they have weekly poetry prompts. As I’m working on my fiction, I also think I’d like to improve my poetry. As a result, I plan on sharing my responses to the prompts.
Still Shattered Hearts Yearn
Isn’t it strange how we all wish to be remembered?
No one goes through life, craving to be forgotten (yet I still waltz on creaking floorboards to forgotten vinyl records with ghosts of yesterday).
I have not forgotten your name, though I do not speak it. I have not forgotten the scent of you, though it has been long since I inhaled you.
“Breathe me,” the phantom insists, as though by simply catching her scent will be enough & this seance can end. (The dead haunt these cemetery nights, but I am more tormented by the eyes of the living.)
I gasped your name in empty corridors.
I expected your footfalls to greet me, but instead, I waltzed on creaking floorboards to forgotten vinyl records with ghosts of yesterday.
I am breathless with the hope of wanting but struck dumb by the cold marble eyes of corpses.
You told me secrets that could drown a man, submerge him in your memories (toe tag and all), when all he sought was levity, lightness of being.
The sacrifices a Queen makes are not meant to be understood by all, but when she speaks of love as though she is a martyr, your eyes fall upon a familiar crown of thorns.
You swore you wouldn’t be the patron saint of the lost and the damned,
but the Queen does not forget and she wields a sword dipped in your blood.
Do not beg forgiveness if you are not willing to seek atonement. I am breathless with the hope of wanting & still shattered hearts yearn.
Isabelle Palerma 