I should learn to look at an empty sky...

Poem::
"I should learn to look at an empty sky"
~ From "The More Loving One" by WH Auden

I see my future when the sky is dark, when the moon and stars are all shrouded by black clouds, and all forms of light, all forms of hope, are blocked from view. Once I hoped and, perhaps shamefully, still do that I shall not live the lonely life that I see stretched before me. The stars are bright tonight, but further ahead the horizon turns a sepalchral black. And I know. I know this is the future we work toward. Emptiness... Loneliness... Nothing ever changes. Nothing ever will. I will, perhaps years from now, perhaps but a few months, gaze on a sky covered over with stars and see nothing but a giant black net smothering me like a death-shroud, and hold close to my bosom the candle of his memory. I SHOULD learn to look at an empty sky... But Hope will not let me and, no matter how persuading Reason is, I can deny Hope nothing...

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Dream::
I am running. From who? No, from what? From the past. From the future. Yet, I run in vain, for with every step I take and every breath I draw, I pull myself that much closer to the future I fear, and that much more of the past presses ever-closer in my consious mind. "The past is past," I gasp out to myself. "Let it pass." Yet, I cannot. It has such a grip on me that it has welded itself almost to my skin. The future... The future is twice as frightening as the past. There is a fork in the road ahead, and my path shall be chosen by the time I reach it, but both are dark with the unknown. Both hold terrifying futures. One holds the future of a young woman, alone save for her work, a woman who uses her work to hide away from the world, and especially from her past. The second holds myself and another bound together for eternity, bound together in love.

But what should be so terrifying about that? Love is a good thing, right? Why do I shorten my steps now to avoid that path? The other is known in partiality to me, but this is... a complete unknown. Yet love is still... It is a wonderful experience, this I know, it is freeing, it is hope, it is joy... So why do I shy away from both paths? Is there a reason? Yes. I am horribly afraid of commitment. Why? I am afraid of dissapointing, afraid he shall find that what he thought he saw in me, he truly did not, terrified he shall come to realize that he did not truly love me, petrified that I shall be hurt... Or worse still, that I shall hurt him. As realization hits me, I stumble and fall, but I never reach the ground, for his arms envelope me in safety...

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Conflict::
My heart is torn between hope and hopelessness. On the one hand all hope does is build you up before you fall. On the other hopelessness is morose, but at least that way, you're never disappointed. On the one hand, hopelessness is our undoing, and hope our re-making. On the other hand, everything contains its opposite...

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Conclusion::
The road ahead is long and dark
With fright in every breath
The stars are dim
The sky is black
And hope and lack thereof
Are always one the same

The stars bleed clouds
To block their rays
From the runners in the night
Arms embrace to stay the fall
Yet we fall just the same
In a pit of darkness
Dispair seeps in
When love is far away

The stars ahead do hide away
I am afraid of night
This night so dark
And so alone
The night approaching steady
Yet, I have loved a star too nearly
To truly be afraid

A candle burns like my star
So very close at heart
Cruel wax that snuffs
His loving flame
And pulls him far from me
This night ahead is cold and dark
Alone or with him still

Hope it burns with the stars
Blotted out by clouds
And I should learn
To look at an empty sky
For loved or lost
The sky is black
And fear, it overwhelms...