What Might Have Been

I don't quite know where this came from, I just got the image in my head one day years ago - it wouldn't leave me alone.


She sits in the darkness, hands holding her head
Looking at dried up roses, sun on their heads bowed
The light shifts through the glass, illuminating the dead
Flickering across their raisined carcasses
Looking through the pane of death’s door
A floor now littered with broken promises
Once so meaningless, now so empty and cold
Symbols of brutal heartbreak from the chair do spread
Gloating, cynical laughter and tear-stained pleading
Weave their magic into her, like remembered fists
“So that’s what love is like”, she thinks to herself
She reached and touches her own drying blood
No fresh flowers or an honest wedding ring
There is only what the daily love beatings bring
Getting up, she touches a weary rosebud
And watches it fall apart, like her dreams, in her hand
Without a breath, she now knows her dreams are dead
Returning to her throne, she sits there and cries
For the loss of her dreams, and thinking what might have been