Does the dormant man in iron shackles
Wonder about her soul?
Did it leave this world and enter the afterlife
Was it the skies or the underworld?
Or did it remain
Unheeded
Under a case of cold empty skin
Did it drift through the earth
Like feathers in the pillow,
Or did it silently remain
Like an abused child
Too frightened to move or speak?
Or did it simply remain as it's own little entity
Eating away at itself
Until the only thing left,
Was a gaping hole
In this gray man's heart?

Does this worn man with a gaunt figure and drawn face
Think of her own face
Pale blushed with the sweetest pink
As though kissed by two roses
Lips like two arresting rubies cast in silver
And a melodious voice smoother than honey?
Does he dream of her soft hair
Like a mane of silk
Far too unreal to be true?

Do the nights find this tormented soul's mind wary
Of passing specters
And old ghosts revisiting his nightmares?
Do the sins of this man eat away at his soul
As he sits in the dark confinement
His punishment
Dreaming endlessly of freedom
To feel the breath of the wind mingling with his own
The sugar sweet vibrant red apples picked from an orchard exploding with colour
And the starry heavens
Where maybe her soul went?

Nay, this chained old man with beard growing snowy white
Sits for one eternity,
His sentence for his crimes,
His eyes blank, empty vials
The wine of life having left long ago
Leaking out of a hole in the bottom
Where his soul used to be
Sometimes he thinks of her
Her beautiful innocence
And thinks he can see her in the evening skies
Through iron bars
But then those watery thoughts wash away
For then he wonders,
Knows,
Where his soul soon will go.