I Am Surely Lost

(in a fantasy)

“Lost in Reality”, by Abi Danial (unframed artwork on wood, in the author’s closet.

I search for you in this moonless emptiness
where the smell of decomposing leaves
compresses the air.
Amidst the barren trees and lifeless vines
a silent ghost appears now and then
to whom I whisper my prayers.

Are you the moon I see but can never hold?
Are you the unfinished story but forever told?
My heart speaks out, yet there is not a sound …
Where I am lost, you are never to be found.

I watch you from afar, safe within my womb
I touch no one, and no one touches me
a painful, necessary distance.
With stubborn false aplomb surrounding me,
I am vapidly reminded to be steady on,
a fool’s foolish persistence.

I want to scream out! Yell at someone … anyone!

Where I live in the shadows,
beneath your painted, penetrating eyes
you live under the sun,
casting an umbra below, in sunlit, distant skies.

Are you the sun I see but can never hold?
Are you the unfinished story but forever untold?
My soul cries out, yet there is not a sound …
Where I am lost, you can never be found.

So here I am surrounded by a noiseless noise
awaiting I know not what ... to come
a reflection of quiet pain.
There is faint laughter in the air, a hidden voice,
a repetitive soft song and rhyme
with an unobtainable refrain.

You will never know the depths of what I feel,
An agonising love, more fiction than real.
I will hold you fast in my memory’s cage
Writing unspoken words written on this page.

I want to scream out! Yell at anyone … but there is only me.

You are the sun and moon I can never hold.
You will remain the unfinished story never told.
I cry out, but there is no one to hear the sound
Now I am surely lost, and you will never be found.

©Thomas Crandall February, 2026
(from a journal entry I wrote in 2024)

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