THE BURNED HORIZON

Behind your mask
lies a secret face that the world has never seen.
But I have.

It is beautiful and terrible,
tearing at my desolate heart.
How I sought to heal what can never be healed;
you cannot be healed.

The damage was so long ago.
To survive, you buried the unspeakable,
for protection took a mate you did not love,
constructed an identity.

It seemed sturdy to most.
But the facade was always brittle
and cracks appeared, time and again,
flaking the plaster off your ochre wall.

Troubled one, an odyssey would be your fate.
From city to city you roamed, with a child now,
building then breaking bonds, never happy.
A curse hung over you.

And finally you came to me,
my dark-eyed chameleon.
… If only I had known all this.