Elizabeth Romero: Debt

If I could be half-blind with reverie,

or bathed breast-deep in seas of times gone by,

perhaps I could express all that you gave to me,

or whisper worlds into a single sigh.

But I have neither wit nor words in me

to frame a part of what I do not know.

As door to close, as breath to heresy,

as shining, searing sun to melting snow

so time and wounds and scars and emptiness

parade and grin their pride and their pale bones.

I move from know to feel, from numb to press

And fill my lungs with fear as banks hold loans.

Copyright 2017 Elizabeth Romero

Elizabeth Romero lives and writes in Somerville, Massachusetts.

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Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (1859 – 1923)