Untitled Poem

Do you remember when Pip met Estella in the long-cooled ashes of Miss Havisham’s estate, darling?
Do you remember the feeling of possessing great expectations?
We were all ablaze,
All a blaze,
Like the wedding dress on the bride of the groom who never came.
But we were young, darling,
We burned without feeling the flames.

Pale fire.
We were writers in exile,
Chasing butterflies,
A long, long time ago.

What could Pip say to Estella, darling? What could Estella say to Pip?
I was cruelly hurt, as were you.
As were you.
And I hurt you, too.
I hurt you, too.
And we now live in the long-cooled ashes of the selves we never had the opportunity to be.

Dolores, Dolores!
We walked the sorrowful way,
We died in childbirth.
And the rest is footnotes and stardust
Gone tender with madness,
A long, long time ago.

Now silent but for the buzzing of insects,
The chatter of songbirds,
And the wind that flows invisibly
Through spaces we once filled.

There are convicts in the marshes, darling,
Leave them be!
Leave them be.