river styx

And now it seems silly that I held your eyes in such high regard.
I step from the car
after leaving a...goodbye...laced with fabricated hope.
I should have said "don't be a stranger",
I should have kissed you.
And I drive out of town trailing the ghost of you - of this place - behind me.
The exodus is reversed this time.
It is the same drive, only backwards.
Because I see the gauze behind those eyes that drowns and traps and sinks.
I see the dancing, as before, but now also
the bullets that snap like firecrackers around your feet.
I've been too many places to be dragged back under.
I drive, and in so doing, rise.
Rise like a phoenix from the ashes towards a horizon not strapped to sand.
Drive away from nights lost in the bottom of a glass,
and slow mornings spent with the waves and wool.