Ephemeral

The gavel bang a gunshot to the soul

when your voice no longer matters

Iron beds, rusty shower heads

Moments, hours, days...

They all blend into one, the final freedom

contrived by a confused crowd of strangers

the very moment your life shall end, definite-

All they wondered was how long it would take

to acquiesce the case so they may get on with their evenings

of dancing and sweet margaritas that I shall never taste upon my lips

If must I be condemned to die-

What granted but only one final meal?

As if it could replace my stolen time...

I dared of someday sky diving, white water rafting

seeing the eloquence of mountains once more

All the roads untraveled... now but daydreams in a cage

Stripped of my clothes, an identity bland

engagement ring thrown in a basket-

a rose budding- sliced off before blooming

I would have worn a white veil, simple in spring,

Watch children grow, and their own growing old with

the love of my life, rocking chairs and sunsets behind

a white picket fence, now...

Condemned to naught but these white washed walls...

How I miss the colors, how I wish

I could see a rainbow just once more

beneath this blanket as grey and bleak as the verdict

while another walks free with all the possibilities

drawing more breaths than I ever shall

No beauty in finality, no goodbyes of a family

ostracized from, for their own beliefs as

the media wants the fire of destruction,

playing out to pay their rent

as juicing grapefruit and leaving the pulp

a mush of bland, tasteless scraps

to be tossed away...

Moment after moment, doomed to counting down time

Will I fly away at the end? Feel life leaving my body?

Is there more? Will I be cycled again and again

in this same unfair life, a de-ja-vu?

Is this justice for some other life I fail to recall?

Will it burn as the poison ends the flow of my veins?

My only legacy knowing that the truth

may never be known- or known too late,

too late, for me...