The Sigh in the Dark

Waking to darkness, as if
It were an old friend
Yet so unfamiliar it seemed
To me.

It surrounded me in a
Warm comfort that felt false.
It gripped my heart
With cold, cold fingers.

I awoke.
Yet I was not awake.

The silence filled in,
Crushing, like the sound of
A deep and heavy sea.

It seemed as though
I was alone.
Then I heard the sigh in the dark.
A terrible sound, it was.

Of pain.
And the deepest sorrow.

The silence was broken.
I wish it were not.

I wished to stay numb,
But sensation came.
First in my feet, it crept.
I felt a cold that burned,
As if I we're standing on
On the lake of ice.

The chill of the air
Broke my skin in tiny hills,
The smallest of graves.
It seemed like a cloak of black
Ran down my back.

And that sigh in the dark,
Became two,
Then three,
Then five,
Eight.

Fear gripped me then,
Like never it had before.
The ache of it!

I tried to scream, but in such a place,
Such an abyss! one can but sigh.

Then I dawn came to me,
I never thought would, in such dark.

I was them.
They were I.

They were souls of torment.
Tortured in the black!
Souls of such sorrow.
Such guilt!

It weighed in my heart
A heavy sadness.

So I walked on the ice,
It snapped at my skin
Until there was nothing
But bone.

I wept frozen tears.
I heard tormented sighs.
I felt Death's cold cloak.

And I walked.
For what was the infinite
That Time could only dream of
I had become a sigh.