The End Of The Road

Do choices carve the soul in stone,

Or are we born to die unknown?

Are we but shards of broken grace,

Each step a fall, each dream a trace?

We walked the path with heads held high,

But never saw the bleeding sky.

Each turning marked by unseen cost,

The toll for all the selves we lost.

For thirty years, the echoes stayed,

Like frost upon the thoughts I prayed.

They whispered low, they whispered long,

And turned my breath to funeral song.

The mornings came with brittle flame,

But left me hollow, worn, and lame.

No fire to burn, no wound to feel,

Just numbness locked in coils of steel.

The healers smiled with glassy eyes,

And murmured sweet, dismissive lies:

“You’re well,” they said, “the storm has passed,”

Yet something stirred beneath the glass.

I lived outside the mirror’s frame,

A fleeting ghost without a name.

Love was a book I never read,

Its letters smudged, its meaning fled.

The light grew thin in every thought,

While peace remained a thing I sought.

Each breath, a thread too frayed to hold,

Each moment carved in iron cold.

And soon, I know, the dark will win,

The blood will still, the bones within.

No angels weep, no demons cheer,

Just silence swallowing the year.

No bells will chime to mark the fall,

No voices mourn behind the wall.

The roads I walked will shift and fade,

Their dust unmarked by any blade.

The world will grin as though I’d been

No more than wind against its skin.

Its smiles worn like thin disguise,

A colder sun in kinder skies.

No fate will break, no pattern bend,

No tale will change, no truth amend.

A soul once lost will not be found,

Just laid to rest in hungering ground.

Reviews

[Kelly Scheppers]

I always know when I've read something extraordinary, something I can aspire to as a writer. You made me feel that, with waves of wonder and awe. So glad to have discovered you, Milena!