sorrow drips into her heart

soiling the busy veins,

pumping blood that whispers,

and there is comfort

in the sound

a dead sea barely contained

red waves roiling under parchment skin

she is awash in crimson fire

stepping in perfect time

with the tides

dust settles in her sunbeam showers

muffling their song with the suffocating memory

of things long forgotten

tucked away behind bookshelves

and lost in the post

elegance draped over shrunken shoulders

fading in its beauty

like the impression of a handprint left on frosted windows

or a curtain in the sun for too long

a murmur curled around the silence

she is lifted through time

like it is only a word

shakes off the wings of her youth like stardust

and casts them into the night,

silent as the dark that brought them.