A thought of you most taunting

As I press myself to pillows' soft

For a sleepless night of night of wanting

The angel resting, world aloft

I strain to hear you breathing

Gentle sighs of wistful streams

Do you also find yourself heaving

With the weight of forgotten dreams?

Do you start and wake up crying

With a fear of loss bereft?

A greater pain than that of dying

Is the lonesomeness of death.

Do you stab yourself with pleasure

Mend the wounds with gauze of pain?

Is it a torture beyond measure

By which agony seems inane?

Do your fellows offer friendliness

Absolve that void you do confess,

Or do they fill you all with emptiness

And calm you with duress.

Is bed warm and inviting

As a hearth on winter's day

Or is its chill harsh and biting

As to embrace a bird of prey?

Do its talon gorge your innards?

Does its beak rend your flesh?

Are you its most prized dinner,

Eaten young and plump and fresh?

Do you clutch that bitter chasm

Like a slave loves his chains,

For this endless iconoclasm

Is the prick that keeps you sane?

Do you paste a porcelain smile

Across your adroitly crafted lips,

Each, fickle, feminine wile

Lashing crueller than a whip?

Do you lie without thinking it

Given the terror of the truth,

And proceed with all willingness

Masquerading innocence of youth?

Are you drowning in a sea of tears,

Each shed by you alone,

Scorning rafts tossed by frantic peers,

Inventing sins you must atone?

Or are you happy, content and settled

Like the bedrock that you are,

A sunflower among the nettle

In blackest night, a shining star?

Do you spare a thought to those below

As you arrange your bed of clouds?

Or are we just the ebb and flow,

Another face among the crowd?