A Dirge in Broken Steps

The night unravels, thread by thread,
A mourner draped in cloaks of dread.
Its voice is wind, its touch is bedrock,
It calls my name, but not my own.

I stumble, feet on shattered glass,
Through halls where echoes clutch the past.
Their whispers pool in emptied shade,
muted dirges sung, then left to fade.

The air is thick with what was mine,
Their hands still reaching through the pine.
The earth remembers where they fell,
But keeps its silence all too well.

I kneel where voices used to be,
Where laughter rang, now lost to me.
Their names are live-coals in the grit,
Still warm, still aching, still unjust.

And yet, the stars, though cold, though high
Still blink their watchful, emptied eye.
As if to mark, as if to see,
The one who walks, yet cannot be.