slumber

pity the unloved
they cannot ever miss
what they are missing
knowing only the feeling
of an empty ache
like some cold fibrous
shrapnel
that never works its way out
of a wound...
instead it grows larger and more
urgently heavy
first the pit of the stomach
and then the heart
and it makes its way to the
suburbs of the limbs
shoring itself up with bones
that turn to icy lead
and then it makes its way
behind the eyes
there it nests
and kills desire before it
can glow its way into
the brain or makes music
weak and broken, irrelevant
there it grows until
no thaw, no sun, can
undo the grey, icy mud.
Years from now the unloved
corpse will shit the bed after decades of toil
and neglect,
reverting to its pre-determined state.