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Here I am alone in this quiet place for the deceased

Being here allows for some of the chaos to be released

I find countless graves that are now left untended

Numerous bygone people whose lives long ago ended

Our moment on this marble in the unknown is so limited

And after enough time goes by most graves go unvisited

Life can mean so much

Life can mean so little

Numerous neglected graves and broken headstones

We all will become grey ashes or buried, crumbling bones

I grievously fixate on how you and I cannot go on forever

But I want many more devoted years for us to cherish together

The ground above causes caskets below to be broken and defaced

Names inscribed on headstones are worn away and callously erased

Wanting to capture hope in this tranquil cemetery while anxiously walking

I can faintly smell the smoke from wood in the blurred distance burning

The illusion of fleeting childhood left, but for it I still am yearning

I wish for a time in my turbulent mind that never will be returning

Here I disappear, and I am able to unbar my mind’s abandoned doorways

Here I can hear the many whispers impeded by the piercing noise of the day

But lately this cemetery I often haunt is causing me to think of a life without you

And if you were no more then this would be a life I would not want to continue

Fading into terrifying, stalking scenarios while looking at lonely graves sunken in

Six feet down burials of corpses of people now long lost and long ago forgotten

After the clock stops ticking for us we soon cease to matter anymore to anyone

You nurture the vitality in me; without you I would quickly by this world be undone

Here the inevitability of death stares calmly and cruelly my way

Here I am reminded that in an instant you could be taken away

Sitting behind this spectral mausoleum with its gloom cast on me

Much like the dispiriting thoughts obscuring the bewitching view I see

Turmoil flows through me as I think of the skeletons beneath the soil

Turmoil overtakes me as my unsettled, overwhelmed mind begins to spoil

Your curse becomes my curse

When you feel worse, I feel worse

My frail sobriety ran away from me due to this unbelievable ordeal

Only with your repair will it return to me, and then I can begin to heal

I’ve permanently lost all my faith in humanity

I’ve mentally deserted our disintegrating society

What keeps me enduring is the bond we share endearingly

Without your loving hand to hold this life turns far too cold

Without you to embrace tight at night I find no reason to grow old

Without you in a dour, moribund field I would lie despairingly and cry

Without you the entire of me would dwindle, flicker out, and then die

Looking at these resting places right now give me no rest like they used to

They now give me a glimpse of my life that no longer would be lived beside you

Life can mean so much

Life can mean so little

We become a drab pile of lifeless ashes

We are put into the unsympathetic, uncaring ground

I’m trying to live in the now, but the now is so unsound

With you not here places we often go and adore would not matter anymore

With you not here I would not be able to bask in the pretty views at which I stare

With you gone gripping emptiness and perpetual agony would be for me what is in store

With you gone this wretched, hollow cosmos would overtake me, and I would cease to care

Even with you by my side finding persistence to stay in this existence can be a tribulation

Many woes are now defeated foes, but your early end would bring about my self execution

I can only stand this withering land if you’re here to hold my hand

Suicide has constantly tried to convince me that it and I are meant to be

But I cease listening when I think of the dreamlike love of you and me

When everything turns somber you reveal color spellbinding and vibrant

When I’m beyond weary and immersed in only the dreary you come to the rescue

Yet if you become only a memory then my heart will deplete and then go silent

My entire troubled existence I felt alone and ruinous until by chance I met you

Others I love do matter much to me, but only you expel this petrifying, perilous void

And if you became only a thought of the past then by that void I would be destroyed

Walking by dismal graves while into overtaking uncertainty I'm sinking

Sunk and thinking that myself I have always been meant to grimly eradicate

Sunk and sitting by askew headstones with forsaken names disappearing

Lying by abandoned graves while mourning for this world gives way to hate

I can only stand this withering land if you’re here to hold my hand

Your ashes mixed with mine

Thrown in the air and disremembered with time

Your sadness becomes my sadness

Both afraid in a world with such unfair madness

Your death brings on my death

If your heart stops I’ll take one final breath

If you die then I die too

The bond of us is what gets me through

A life very momentary

A life very often scary

We live in a reality very often feeling futile

We exist in a reality that is bleak and brutal

And the worst fear now arrives

And the worst fear now thrives

I cannot live if you’re not alive

By Adam Keith McElwain

Copyright Adam Keith McElwain Poetry