Red on Grey

I gave you all that I had. It wasn't much.

Just my little heart, bonded to yours

so I could feel your every beat,

and hear your every sigh.

 

How does your heart still pulse,

torn so savagely away?

Only tatters of mine remain.

They ache, these quivering tatters,

limp, tender, bloody, raw, bruised and sore.

I burn, and I sting, and I bleed.

 

Let this be a dream, and I'll awake

from these nine months of madness

never having known you;

never having soared above the highest clouds

into the endless blue sky,

on nothing but the warmth of your embrace;

never having imagined

that I'd stumbled upon my reason to be.

 

Let this be a dream, and I'll awake

a lesser human, a lesser man,

for never having known this kind of love.

 

Let this be a dream, and I'll awake

to the familiar pallid grey of living

not with passion, nor with purpose,

but for the sake of living,

each day colourless as the day before,

and colourless as the day to follow.

 

But this is already my new life,

for I’ve been sent back to the tedium

of being here without you,

and I know this is not a dream.

So I will not awake.

And I will not forget.

And I will not mend.

 

Aflame now, I sit amidst the bleak and desolate fog of meaningless, hopeless and timeless existence from which I came. A fiery red mass, I pollute the grey that envelops me and used to colour me. I wilfully spatter the clean dull mist with blood spitting weakly from my broken veins, and I illuminate it with tears of blazing napalm that fall from my eyes and blind me as I weep.

 

I’m condemned to wait again in this familiar place for eternity and a day, before I may quietly shrink into nothing. But returning here I can never be of this dusky world again.

 

I was near you once and vividly you shone on my heart with your brilliant and coruscating light. In that moment you painted me with hot rich hues of scarlet, burgundy and oxblood. Exiled once more to this monochromatic expanse, this time I can sully its cold and stone-grey purity with my raging bitter red glow.

 

That way I’ll always know it wasn’t a dream.

I burn, and I sting, and I bleed.

And that will do.