Leaving Eden

Silence descends heavily in the wake of
your retreating footsteps,
desolate,
cruel in its unrelenting neutrality.
My thoughts are a startled murmuration
of starlings
with desperately flapping wings
resounding mournfully into the middle distance.
They settle delicately on my shoulders,
unable to bear the weight of our
existence.
We were the beginnings
of a dream,
a building crescendo,
the first strokes of a masterpiece
that fate or folly deemed never know
the fulfillment of completion.
A bitter wind sends its piercing cry
through the spaces of my ribcage.
Cold as a January frost.

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