Shadowheart

Shadows are an impenetrable absence.
Silence is a shadow,  a dark puddle
cast by a vacuum. The emptiness left

when you went cold, when they knelt beside you
for an hour zap, zap, zapping. You stayed
polar, an Antarctic vortex life couldn’t penetrate.

A body bag’s closing z-z-zwerp, the vacuum
that swallowed faith and silenced the beat
of our entwined fates. While the source that

cast the void in you remains a mystery,
the absence of you casts weight– an anvil
on my chest. Soul impervious, ice-bound.

Your last breath the source voiding me
and leaving a heart shadow. Now I am
the impenetrable absence of us.

~Nara Malone