Candid Corvid Productions

By Athena Stairs, October 13, 2026

And if I could just tell you
What hides within my heart

How every night’s a parody
As I try to not fall apart

Wrapped within your memories
Of all the years like charity

That reach into my clarity
And tear it all assunder

Would they say that love is torment?
Do I fall to my own detriment

When an open hand once reaching
Disappears before the start?

As I walk among the nightmares
Aware somewhere a wrong turn

But it’s more a once found door
Just slammed into a willing heart

And I wouldn’t blame you one bit
Though inside I’ll scream at the waste of it

Confused and again cast adrift
Looking tear-struck in the dark

From day to day I go about
All the toil they say that life’s about

As I gasp and lurch in fever dreams
Every day without you here with me

Would they say that love’s addiction?
Or that actually its affliction

When without it our conviction
Has no purpose to form art?

And I crave to tell you such things
Abstract and maybe deranged

For some reason thinking that
You’d understand just what I mean

Where the truths collide with fantasy
And souls believe with intensity

Would I rather have this brevity
Than be held with your arms?

And I guess that’s what were left with
Behind silence of words’ intentions

In the emptyness surrounding
When two halves are not as one

I have seen in you the difference
No holding back for consequence

Even though we both have paid the price
In a coin that can’t be bought

And I know that its been difficult
Caught again in what’s been typical

For us both to just believe again
Even when assured a sure win

So my eyes look to the heavens
Then back to earth’s dimensions

And I ponder the deeper mysteries
Growing bored with same old patternings

In the past when I’d capitulate
To breaking free to clear my plate

Should I always self eviscerate?
Leave behind what I still remonstrate?

Its the effort that keeps wearing down
It’s hard to smile when need to frown

When what’s been found gets lost again
And it feels like I’ve lost my dearest friend

In this absence like perpetuum
A sword, a shield, a loaded gun

The rites and rituals magnified
Still dazzle without compromise

And I wouldn’t condemn effort
Even of the slightest gesture

For I want our hope to grow again
For love to light its fire and grin

While I lie awake in reveries
Aggrieved by what was meant to be

Is detachment what I must embrace
To keep surviving bitter ends?

—

(36, 72, both = 9)