The silence is louder tonight,

The absence quite sharp,

No crickets chirping, no wind,

Or leaves being pushed by it.

My feet dangle off the edge of the rock,

Nearly touching the dark air below.

The sky seems so close to my head,

As if the blackness could reach down and grab me,

Pull me into it,

Make me a lonely stain in the canvas of ebony.

I remembered the pearl that used to lay in the sky,

Stretch out for the world to see.

How long ago was it?—

The night that it drowned in the ocean,

Sinking into its reflection like a blade

Slicing the shadows that it lay in—

The shadows of the morning when the sun sank into Hell?

I saw the beauty of life that day,

Just as it was receding from the shallows,

Just as it was taking its last glimpse of me.

Now it seems as though our souls are tainted,

Have been dipped into an ocean of sins.

Without the sun to burn away the darkness,

My blood becomes unmoving tar in my veins,

A replica of the rivers that lay beneath me in the valley,

Being watched by the moonless night,

Watched by its sightless eyes,

Watched by my sapphire pupils,

As I sit beneath this canvas of ebony.