Old Ports

I am docked in familiar places yet in my heart I am a foreigner. No reprieve was found in my homeward journey. My heart is like a corpse perfumed for its burial. Made pretty for one last public outing. What is dead must be buried for the stench of rot is not easily forgotten. Contentment trails behind the sorrow that fills my heart like a flower girl laying the path of new love. How can grief and hope be so intimately entangled? Why does hope bring guilt and mourning comfort? One cannot escape an internal pain. To face what it is that ails us or deny our sickness is a choice of life or death.