Despair

Save me
from this airless place,
bereft of any healing touch,
where all is bound
in a joyless knot
of agony and desolation.
Save me
from the other death,
where hope is gone,
where words are stubble,
where the barren waste
is broken only by the wailing
of my heart.
Save me from this despair,
from the empty echoes of my weeping.
Save me
so that I may not neglect to see
the one forgotten door
opening just a crack
somewhere at the edge
of my helplessness.

--Timothy Haut, March 18, 2016