What the Dead Still Believe

The walks are unforgettable,

the steps we took were inevitable.
I enjoyed them for a while,
but you were the reason behind every mile.
Life was my priority before,
yet you made me question what I stood for.

You cheered the hardest,
still you were the loudest.
I was breaking, yet I kept your name,
lost in the ruins of an unfinished game.
The hierarchy I chose to disobey,
the rituals I refused to obey.
I felt it so deep, beneath my skin,
the kind of pain you cannot simply swallow in.

The pain was not natural, it was implanted,
a wound carefully placed, yet never anticipated.
A keen observer, supposed to impart,
became the one who betrayed the heart.
The greatest betrayal I never saw,
came from the hand I trusted most of all.

I lost, I won, I did neither in the end,
I wanted it fiercely, but could not amend
the plans they had chosen, the fate they had drawn,
while I kept moving long after they were gone.

They chose the battle, I still went to attack,
you were my defence, my shield, my way back.
But one single arrow, sharp and precise,
was enough to destroy what I built in my eyes.

Now I am a file, with belief as my name,
holding what remains of a once burning flame.
So let me believe, let me carry it through,
let me believe in what I once knew.

That something may rise from what has died,
that something may live where the lost reside.
Not to bring the dead back into the light,
but to keep their unknown alive through the night.

Perhaps belief is all that remains,
a quiet resurrection born out of pain.
Something the living may never perceive,
something only the dead were meant to believe.