Sew me a robe
made from skeins of history,
wield your golden needle
and make the stitches true.
Dress me in mourning
and douse the room
  --there will be no feast tonight.

Seize the revelers as they gather at the gate,
and press them to service as mourners,
for this journey
shall begin with a shroud.

Away with all advisors!
Away with couriers of news!
Away with all this youth,
  --for I have need of experience tonight.

Bring me torch and flame
and before mourner's wail
I will undo the record of my shame.
To ash distraction shall crumble.
Stables of gilded bone become coal,
and all I have allowed chance near
shall away on wind blow.

I shall step in traveler's kit,
a stranger from my own ruin,
and begin my pilgrim's trek
fair free from all
but what remains within.

You think me mad,
such a high compliment
I take that to be,
for I want no more
of this callous death you have named
'Sanity.'

I want no more of darkness
you call 'light'
or love that is not freedom
but blight.

For I have remembered
the desire that guides me.

A love that I do not know now,
but rested with once,
only to take my leave
not realizing what I sought
was in that very company,

and the gods being gods
like to play first,
before offering sympathy,
and I,
besotted on promise,
forgot my longing.

Till now reminded,
by accident and excess,
of my willingness to spend a lifetime
preparing for what may never come
as chance.

You think this is sacrifice,
this leaving walled gardens and warmth?

It is not.

For I know that even if my desire is not met,
I will have lived a better life.
then any kind I could have found.
where there is no difference
between grave and bloom.

My anger is wed to my grief,
their trousseau
the fine lines that drape my eyes.

My heart beats equal now,
knowing not the difference
between love or riot,
a distinction thought easy by the young.

It is not my heart anymore
I leave to make such choices,
but my soul,
that is governed by all,
not just froze moments.

My soul who is guiding me now,
away from comfort I mistook for judgment,
indecision and fear
I celebrated as choice.

For though my heart once freed me
it was too frail to prevent the sickening of my senses,
the poison,
my steady weakness for safety.

And all these years past,
in my ever bigger and ever brighter and more crowded halls,
I have dressed my sorrow in laughter
and chased it from the room,
never wanting to hear its question
for fear of gathering gloom.

Better a clown.
Better some shining false jewel,
then for me to face the pain
of having missed you.

What madness possessed me
to think that love could be subdued,
barricaded behind cold walls
and silenced with good food,
ordered and controlled by
season and holiday.

It was madness I tell you,
madness to imagine that.

And here now late,
late I am to have awaken
and only by accident, fate
it was to have found the strength
to find myself standing before all I have known,
watching
as it burns to the ground,
and by dying flame shall my first miles be shown.

My madness now is not the thought,
that by retracing my steps
I would find you again at rest,
but that perhaps,
perhaps in the few years I have left,
I can once again find
the person
you believed me to be.

And if I find nothing more nor less,
that alone
would at last
give my soul
rest.