THE DEPARTED GUEST
His skull is an abandoned amphitheatre,
empty of echoes, the green tinge to the inner
cavity his last twilight dream of ancient forests.
And here, follow the traces of the two weathers
that afflicted his dreams: hope: that always
meant the future, and: fear: the drone of a past
that could never be undone.
Over time,
the parietal plates of his skull drifted apart,
the Pangaea of his centre, constructs of his thought,
set out in a system of the rationale, all fell softly
aside, without so much as a whisper.
Decomposition began from the inside out,
unhurriedly, merciless and unstoppable as rumour.
That other, the one within him,
departed the bastion
of his being, silently, and without his knowledge.
© Stephen Oliver
