At Midnight

At midnight his hand slipped from mine,
his fate became a cinder block in blood,
forever carved like a blade mark upon my palm.

At midnight my heart became his body
as I sat in disbelief ,
cornered in the cloistered shell of regret,
my insides spilling at his side
like an incessant stream,
interior tethered like a tongue that can’t speak.
How sudden his departure
descending like rain into a gutter,
provoking my crawl into a hermit hole.

I tried to hold on, but he wanted to go,
desperate for another world.

At midnight in November
my heart became his body,
riven, riddled, bruised by the plunge.

His hand slipped from mine,
and I wanted to hide myself,
dig myself into the dirt
like a worm in earth’s darkness.
I sulked in his absence like Tantalus
beckoning the branch to bend, but the fruit
would not fall.

The rain came in November and I sought shelter
in a cave of questions,
but no answers were given,
so I pondered the existential angst of living
not knowing morning’s horizon,

At midnight his hand slipped from mine
and he fell like a star from Orion.

Matthew J. Lawler is a poet and Chicago native. He has been published in numerous literary journals, including, The Miscreant, Sick Lit Magazine, Caravel, Visual Verse, Unlost, Tuck Magazine, People's Tribune, forthcoming in an anthology( The Best Emerging Poets of Illinois) by Z Publishing. He lives to write and writes to live. You can find him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/matthewjlawlerpoet Read other articles by Matthew J..