Sleepless

Again, she’s inspecting the cracks in the ceiling:

Have they spread? 

Are there more now than there were before?

And must every one of her hopes, so tightly clutched, be thwarted?

She is a restless decipherer of omens.

When for a moment she contrives at last to shed her vigilance,

she dreams again of the rambling and familiar ruins,

and of the spacious chamber within, long unnoticed,

intact and welcoming amidst the wreckage.

She wonders if she will ever dare to enter 

or if forever 

remembering and forgetting her grief, 

she is condemned helplessly to track the jagged paths

that savagely fissure, yes, and threaten to cleave,

the tumbledown shelter where she keeps her heart.