Sitting in my room
cigarette in hand,
a candle flickering to the breath
of each life long beat of time,
I wonder thoughtfully if its mine.

A flag unfurled, hangs limply on my wall,
her colors no longer triumphant,
she melts silently into the background,
not caring who looks, salutes or desecrates.

Bookshelves bulging with what was and might have been, stand painfully, cobwebbed and musty on my wall.
Their contents, no longer of significance,
huddle together in painful array.

A cigarette now a butt
in a stale, forlorn ashtray blinks no more.
Her acrid flavor lost in time,
she lies crumpled and dying,
smoldering in her last attempt to stay alive.

And I wonder thoughtfully, respectfully,
if it was ever really mine.

ESM

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