The Dye is Cast

He wakes each day to quiet, empty rooms;

He thinks (a touch too much) but seldom speaks.

His blanket swallows dawn like pauper’s debt.

The walls rehearse his name, then let it leak

back into the alabaster plaster.

He falls through days like dreams that won’t be kept.

Each step erased, each breath a brief deceit.

His heart’s a house where many guest have slept.

He never learned the language of the sweet,

never bent the knee and never asked her.

The end arrives in iambs, soft and slow;

a tidal drum beneath his ribs’ thin dome.

Unwittingly, she’ll call to ‘no one home’.

The shape of him just skin stretched over bone

and from this moment he shall sail alone.