What I leave behind

What will it say, my epitaph?

How will the stone etched words

tell those that don’t know?

Will I be seen as a wretched soul,

prone beneath bronzed autumn fallings?

Or will I be a shining light,

my heart beat forever heard in still syllables?

I have engraved my life in ink,

stapled and stored it with the memories,

that will, one day, sit gathering dust

for todays adolescent minds

to discover in their tomorrows.

I have wept diamante tears

and screamed pain into the virgin sheets,

no gloss, no wool, just reams of truth

and dismantled my life, page by page

in syllabic stutterings before a silent audience,

feeling a sense of relief at each final sentence.

Will they weep at my words

in the decades to come

or deem them fake?

Who knows.

I have lived beautifully.

I have loved with fiery passion,

scratched hope into dreams,

into notebooks.

My tired scribbling shouts euphoric

wonder at mastering victories

over catastrophe.

Will these lines still twitch a smile or

a twinkle of glee in those that read them?

Time will tell.

I am but a writer of simple words,

bleeding my soul into parchment

and hoping to touch just a single heart.

These are my truths and they

will sit behind rotten lips one day.

Does it really matter what it says above me

when I am gone?

Will it matter if my work remains hidden in with the

forgotten toys and sepia pictures?

I will never know if anybody took the time to

indulge or care.

But I hope they do.