Threading his fingers through the fine powder -
soft as silk - he looked for a bead of grit.
Anything that could give him closure
from his aching heart that was split.
Soon he decided tears were divisible.
Only a crystal rolled into the bed
of fine particles agreed to be tangible.
He was a man haunted by the unsaid:

Words were ghosts that would walk through walls,
and sentences phantoms that would disperse
in a room full of stoney faces and sharp glances.
At least, and at the very least, he knew:
If there was nothing to hold on to and use,
There was nothing left behind to break in two.

© Eva Irvine