Memories

In each waking moment you stand
Before me once again, and extend
Your hand to me as you did so long ago.
In dreams you come again to be ever
At my side…protector and defended both.

Once you took me from the darkness
And gave me back a world of sun
So bright that one could die to look
Upon it from the other side of life,
From the world of shadows that is my own.

But there is nothing but eternal silence
Now, where once you touched me with
Voice and tender hand.  If your dreams
Were to lead you back to me now, You’d see
Me as I am: the nightmare one cannot escape.

Hope survives no longer in the heart and mind
You see, and the sanctum of my sanity
Shall swiftly fade away beneath the
Endless stream of time so quickly come
To claim a soul for what it is to be.

I stand before the tribunal of my sins
Defeated, raped in soul and mind
Until naught clean remains to offer
Those who look to me for aid.
What would you see now in these haunted eyes?

You have the lives you wanted now, with
No thought to the cost; for the pawns
Thriving on the leavings of your
Vaunted footsteps, what comes now?
Is death the only way that such as us will see the light?

My world is rising with the smoke
And ashes of a thousand dreams;
In so few strokes you’ve killed it all,
And life means not a thing.  Not even
Sleep can take me from this battleground within.

Yet still I pray for one more sight of what’s
Been lost for good: a family, people to love…
A place where I belong.  I am aware that
Once I retreat to my shadowed glade, you shall
Recall only the peace for which my blood has paid.

No one will remember once I fade into the night
That there had been a time you loved
And knew me as your own.  No monument
Will show the name of one who gave it
All…just another death, another ghost without a name.

The dreams that now disturb your sleep will pass
Upon the morn, but my nightmare has barely
Yet begun to stalk the night.  While memories
Of you remain with me until this day, I
Know there is no hope for me if I should choose to stay.