( painting by Remigiusz Dobrowolski )
I am sitting in my worn cane chair
at my grainy raw timber desk
facing this window of lost youth
hoping to glimpse the scenery
before the dusk sinking into the night.
My hair is wiry and thin
salt and pepper without the spice.
My trembling, scaly hands raising to my skull.
My strawly fingers running along the scrawny sockets
to the elongated pointed nose
to the cold shrivaled lips.
They are the same track your hands and lips travelled.
Your faces are haunting me outside the window,
one by one, your faces of disappointment, hatred, wailing, brokenhearted, unforgiving…
playing screen by screen as the scenery of
my only connection to the outside world.
Here I am, in confinement
where I confessed all my wrongdoings, misbehaving, betrayals, poisonous venom.
I repaid all these with my youth, my solitary, my self inflicted torment
until I become a bag of bones, dust to dust, ashes to ashes…