The Persistence Of Loss: Chapter 1

The best of mark leavers

Make the prettiest patterns.

Like a chameleon

You never know just what color she'll shine

But you know she'll shine outright.

A pool as fathomless as the sea

The color of honey in sunlight

If you look just right, you can get lost.

She holds herself a fighter

Talks like a general

Scowls like a dictator.

She hides behind that smile

She hides in her own laughter

Hides from most everyone

Behind a cheery disposition.

Behind that paper thin smile

Behind the shallowest of her laughs

She hides in the darkness

Nurses wounds most couldn't bear

Carries them with her

Won't let them heal.

“The persistence of loss is a teacher.”

“If I let them go away, I'll forget what they taught me.”

“If I stitch them up and stop letting them bleed, I'll die hollow.”

Behind that fighter's stance

Behind her confident words

Behind that face that warns you you're in trouble

She gathers her gloom

To feed her

To drive her

To break her.

But in that darkness

There's always another

Another that learned from the persistence of loss.

Another that's afraid to let wounds heal

For fear of forgetting how they got them.

And that

Is the creature

That can make her

Or break her.