This Darkness

this darkness wraps me in its ribbons of regret and cloying strangling tendrils of forgetfulness.
its arms and lips promise me the loss of a world, a loss of the ache of my misspent life, a reprieve from the trundle of my days.

beside me, smooth worm flesh, a warmth succulent and enrapturing.

you rhythm in sleep, breathing but not in peace, its not rest, just a dark continuation of the sting and scrape of your toil.
you grind teeth, legs and torso twitch and from you, groans of loss and defeat.

i watch as your jerking spasming body pantomimes your sorrows,and i mummified in my powerlessness am helpless to alleviate them, yet,
i lay crushed to powder under the weight of the guilt of you life.

i listen to each exhale and inhale, the inevitable tide of your desperation,
and in those weasing curls of air i hear the refrain whispered beneath your breath, beneath the dark,"if not for you"
and i ache.

and i ache, and i feel the pull of regret, of opportunity lost, of possibility
denied, and of the sting of despair, that the spool of time we each carry encoded deep in our being is unraveling, spooling away and
the end is quickly looming on the rim of tomorrow.

the clinging tendrils of your warmth entangle me, and i move closer to the curves
and hips that my hands have read and played and fondled and grabbed for years beyond count, from the fern green beginning, to now, this darkness, this promise of reprieve.

this night, this darkness that has grown deep inside, and spills out as i flutter deeper into the layers of sleep, and i still wonder, what if, what if,
and try to trace this tortuous path that has led us hear, to this place to this time.

unplanned for, unlooked for, unanticipated. being lost knowing where you are.
i have led you astray, led you into my labyrinth without a trail of string to trace your way back out.

no trail of bread crumbs, no sign posts, just twisted turns, and contorted paths,.

all leading no where, all without purpose, without thought.

knowing where we are , lost.
without hope of rescue, with out promise of redemption.
just the end glaring back from the darkness.

and you twitch, and grind, and i lay suspended in the dark aching,
sorrowing that i have led you to nowhere, led you to now, to this sleep,
that for you is not even a reprieve from the chore that your life has become.

i shake the darkness and the the dust of despair billows then melts into the swallowing dark.

in the silents i reach and with knowing hands, travel the flesh of your warmth,
hoping to capture a spark, a flame, a dieing ember, something to help me decode the darkness, but nothing happens.
you rhythm deeper into your own darkness,

and i ,

i withdrew and lay swaddled in your warmth, but i wonder if it will sustain me through this directionless slumber, through this darkness of my soul, through this meaningless purposeless labyrinth.

and i beyond hope and belief, hope and believe.