Finding bitterness I turn away, laugh vociferously, and stride singing in the fretful air of summer’s searing, dreaming faded stamps of foreign places. It is hot in this closet of words. A heart’s screams are stifled here. My memory’s child weeps in the shadows, an echo of essence decades distant. I have known the pity, the platitudes, the vacant mornings, the bitter bones that break when death departs. Yet, I believe in that first future, awakening itself without fear or fear of failure. Finding bitterness I turn away. No sorrow now. I rejoice in the strength that lifts above the water, above the waves.