Passage of Years

by Lynne Zotalis


after a certain amount of time, logical, reasonable
passage of years
different for everyone, there isn’t a conscious sense
of death anymore, the loss
doesn’t physically hurt, more like rubbing
against a scar,
aware of the wound, memory telling the soul
what to feel. Ever present,
you graze the edge of my soul
with hammering silence. I keep distant,

my existence
apparently regardless
of the passage of years, a dozen years,
no longer black or dark,
gray, yes,
cloudy still, chilled
shades of imagination
not of regrets but rather
what might have been


* * * * *

Lynne Zotalis is an award winning author placing 1^st in the creative nonfiction category from Firebird Book Awards for Hippie at Heart (What I Used To Be, I Still Am). Her short stories have won publication for three years in the R.H. Cunningham Short Story Contest through Willowdown Books. Her poetry has appeared in  Nature 20/20, Tuck Magazine, writinginawoman’svoice, The Poetic Bond VII, VIII and IX, and Lyrical Iowa. Saying Goodbye to Chuck, a daily journal helping to enunciate the readers’ personal grief process along with her other publications are available on Amazon. 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DC6GZ7T