Places

I’m
compelled
to return
to the places
where love once knew me.
Scents of redolent times lost.
Golden days encased in frost.
My heart says “don’t go”,
but I’m obliged
by grieved guilt
to go
back
where my
soul once sang,
in grayed places
of stray memories
that have since forgotten me.
I’ve become an absentee,
in empty places
without faces.
This pierced
heart,
aching,
lingering,
letting the past
slowly eat at me,
until my dimmed heart is gone,
this the last song of the swan.
My knees in the dirt,
hands on my face,
in places
of my
loss.

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I wrote this poem as an arkquain swirl.