I Left You Behind On the Painted Shore

A Poem

Photo by Saksham Gangwar on Unsplash

the horizon bleeds red,
like a wound in the sky —
and I’m waiting on you
to show your true colors
before I get too bruised

but the waiting hurts
because I’ve been at this game
for what feels like a small eternity,
watching the hourglass fill
with sands of this lost love

the shore whispers secrets
as I walk along its line,
the path clear and narrow,
so much more straightforward
than the road you led me on

but my footprints disappear
as quickly as they are made —
as if I’m a ghost on land
with no impressions left to make,
just scars to leave behind

the memories rush like the waves,
each one more stabbing than the last,
and I wonder what I ever saw
in the little globe you tried to forge
for us, just us, a world we couldn’t leave