“Little Cracks”
It only takes a memory
To lose your breath
One single slip of your guard
And the pain you try so hard to forget
Trickles in
It whispers about what used to be
It screams your faults
It shows you what you will no longer have
And then it slowly recedes
Possibly comforted by its damage
Forever now seems to be just a word I did not know the
meaning of
Or it is just a lot shorter than I ever knew it would be
I can’t run from myself
There is nowhere to hide
So I fill the world with anything but my own past
Dreading the pauses where she slips in
The walls I build grow higher
And eventually
Her touch
Her voice
Her smile
None of it will reach the summit of my divide
The one that separates our yesterdays from my tomorrows
So for now I brace myself
Preparing for that quiet
For that ache
For anything that sneaks past the sentinel meant to defend
my heart
Robert Lloyd