Poem: Warning of a Revengeful Lover

 by Dawn Sands

On the floor, there is a puddle

of my thousand fruitless tears.

A clouded, salted swamp on white tile;

vacant; 

translucent surface scattering my hazy reflection

into a thousand empty fragments.

One slice of my figure

for every tear you coaxed from my eyes

for every lash you hurled gently at my back;

this is the way it has been

and will always be, for

when a person is gone, they disappear into the void of time / and are, therefore / left to the will of your imagination / no more real / and just as malleable / as a lucid dream

and you might not be dead

but the fire you sparked is long extinguished;

dampened by the brewing of those thousand futile tears

and ruined by their downpour,

my weary eyes at last relinquishing the storm.

Because in the end, water quells fire, my love,

my love,

those two words now bitter as ash

as they rest on my earthen tongue.

And it may have been a gradual process

but I can see you now, with my mind’s blurred eye

standing tall on some high clifftop

as you manipulate the elements;

never guessing

that my thousand fruitless tears

might amount to something in the end.

For when the puddle evaporates / it will leave only salt / salt / to protect me from another onset of frost / and to ensure that your name lives on / eternally embedded in the shadow of my heart / but always just as malleable / as a lucid dream.