Echo and Silence

The photograph lies faded at the edge,

Its silver ghosts still breathing soft and near;

Each smile preserved along a fragile ledge,

Yet shadow stains the corners of the year.

I hear your laughter ripple down the hall,

A memory bright as morning’s open skies;

But silence waits, a deeper undertow’s call,

To drown the echo with its darker guise.

So love remembers both the bloom and thorn,

A woven cloth of ache and tender glow;

From night’s black soil the brightest dawn is born,

Where loss and radiance rise in ebb and flow.

Thus joy and sorrow, mingled, will remain:

Two chords entwined in one immortal strain.