First Draft ABSENT SHADOWS First Draft

Not alive and not dead I stand betwixt two plains

This place never have I visited. 

No thing lends me comfort in the familiar reassurance of what is known.

The foreignness pierces me with emptiness and unsettled me. 

———

I want and wish the pain be gone.

The hurt feels more than I can bear.

Tormented and tortured  oh how my heart heaves and aches; 

Without end the stabs pierce one the next.

How do I endure sadness such as this, 

Sorrow so deep I am lost below myself

Try as I might do I climb;

Stretching, the length of each fading hope

I reach as far and high as I can. 

I gasp for breath while good air lasts.

Fleeting, it too with shrinking hope is lost.

I steel myself for the next suffocation;

To survive as I struggle to endure 

This Life in empty shadowsof her absence

Trapped in queer sensations of cold

that do not long warm, I shiver unsettled.