There Flows a Darkness

There flows a darkness, born of fear--
cold, malignant, and thick with loneliness.

Grief percolates, brewing desperation
for loving arms, safe and strong,
that will never hold me again.

Mired in chilling, black, molten tar of terror--
ravenous, ever-growing, feasting
on dead dreams and steady streams
of loss, despair, fragility, and futility.

Forgotten or forgetting--which is worse?

Abandonment--you are my history;
are you my destiny, or simply self-fulfilling prophecy?
You're a relentless, suffocating muck
that brings perpetual dread to my soul.
Frantic attempts at escape have proven
that every path leads right straight back to you.

The sinking shadow spreads, expanding 
from within and from without.
Where bleakest blackness grows
there once flowed love and light,
now a distant, fading memory, like a dream.

My fullness, my abundance, forever lost--
whittled and withered away, dispensed
in disposable, single-serve moments.
Returned for deposit.  Rinse and repeat.
Recycled. Reused.

My domino effect of failure:
first hope capitulates, then happiness,
as confidence concedes. Death
of identity descends. Everything
I was or ever hoped to be is lost
within the cancer of despair.

I survived a lack of love when young;
hope was a powerful enabler.
I endured isolation and rejection,
my stubborn strength, somehow enough.
Upon maternal instincts I kept afloat,
as my eyes kept sight on someday.
But older now, with eyes pried open,
I find myself paralyzed
by a single savage question:

What will become of me, now?

Who will be there when I fall
to tell me everything's alright?
Who will hold me in their arms
when it gets chilly in the night?
Who will share my sunset days
when my home's an empty nest?
Who will hold my hand
when I someday lay my mom to rest?
Who'll still see the younger me inside
when I've turned wrinkled, old and gray?
Who will reassure my fears
when life’s tragedies come my way?

Upon whose loving strength will I depend
when my life draws near its final end?

There flows a darkness, born of fear--
cold, malignant, and thick with loneliness.