What I Held in My Hands
(Or The Death of Innocence)

In sleep I know
the full and certain fear
that once was born
from the lock.

Waking distance,
still-born sleepwalker.
A mind reforming,
constancy in division alone.

If I face the mirror
I lose totality -
incomplete, there's joy in that
but ire too.

My state of grace
is fixed,
a skin unfulfilled -
addiction to the sound
of a heavy heart,
the rush of thunder
through my core.

Do not read too much
into existence -
What I learnt, knew,
forgave was acceptance
of grief and finite stories
and the end of pain
reached at its peak.

Silently oft repeated lessons
in altering each stitch of time -
contain the fire of the mind
and disappear
before it is reborn.

The resolution of each day
is marked precisely,
not by setting sun
but realignment -
faith placed in my hands.

I, and I alone
captured yet cageless
lost in stillness
because time is not enough
to cleanse.

My hands, that cut away
the threshold imbalance of youth.
The same hands
that shake with lack,
which often I call stranger,
and traitor too.
These very hands
are numb,
woken by the tide of night
to the remembrance of flesh.

They reach out
for that which lies
dormant within,
for the substance of soul
and to unwind the errors
of my compass,
and strangle the sound
of threat, which echoes
through the years.

I, too, once thought
that blind obedience
to Might was warrant;
Mine, too, was a nature
driven to appease
what beasts I met
for fear and fear alone.

Would that that error
was not always met
with burden -

Might I not have noticed
the death of innocence?