You see it only in her spiralled path;
a tell-tale inwards movement to the heart
that veers away from what we might predict
with just the broadest knowledge of the past.
Some forces barely leave the merest trace
But nonetheless impel us through the dark.
Reactionless, the silence of the dark
conceals the hidden twisting of the path
that traps the weak, as by an unpaired trace
we might become ensnared. And in her heart,
she knows the warning signs, but is far past
the point of no return. What we predict
in hope so rarely comes to pass. Predict,
but know it will not help you in the dark
when all your thoughts are bent upon the past,
except perhaps to show you how your path
can still fulfil the wishes of your heart;
though bitter, twisted tears may sometimes trace
the ruins of your hopes, the glimmered trace
they leave behind, like stars, it might predict
an easing to the pain within your heart.
The heaviness of nothing in the dark,
exhausting, still, it holds her to the path
that leads inexorably from the past
to unsuspected places, and then past
into the future. If she could re-trace
her steps, the moments spent upon this path,
why, then it would be easy to predict
the necessary time within the dark
to learn the hidden depths within her heart.
To hold the fleeting beating of a heart
and then to leave it ever in the past,
a focal point of life and death, so dark
and bright… No wonder, then, the trace
of joy and grief, that drives her to predict
some grace or meaning on this endless path.
The hopes that line the path into her heart
cannot predict. She leaves behind the past,
and trusts that trace of life will end the dark.