purgatory

stuck in between a heaven and a hell.....

purgatory

(a temporary, painful state of purification enabling souls to be fully cleansed for Heaven.) 

a poem by colton warr 

he lives in the pause

between almost and never,
where words hover like breath in the winter,
visible,
but gone before they land. 

Her name sits behind his teeth,
a prayer he doesn’t believe in enough to say aloud,
soft as a bruise he keeps pressing
just to feel something answer back. 

he tells himself: "not yet, not now, not right,"
as if time were a door
and not a wall. 

days pass like quiet verdicts,
and still he rehearses
sentences that tremble apart in his hands,
"I think-"
"I wish-"
"if you ever-"

but nothing survives the crossing. 

she smiles at him
like sunlight he cannot step into,
and he returns it
like a man practicing warmth
in a cold room. 

this is his forever:
not loss, not love,
but the echo between them.

a life
lived in the almost,
where hope rhymes faintly with fear
and neither one wins,

and somewhere inside him
a voice keeps asking
if silence is mercy,

or just another way
to disappear….

Reviews

[Curly Grace]

This reads like a soul caught at a threshold. neither stepping forward nor turning away. You render that liminal ache with such clarity

[Chris Shaw]

Oh for some movement, to change this situation. He appears frozen. A step forward could make all the difference to this situation. You caoture the predicament well. Thank you for sharing.

Chris