All Roads

Your silence created a chasm
so wide and deep it swallowed
the earth around it for miles.

It happened suddenly at first
like a landslide, chaos in its wake,
and then crept slowly outwards
like aftershocks, the land 
cracking, crumbling, caving in. 

I back away from the pit, walk
in new directions, hope and possibility
and trying to forget, but 
the opening is so vast, its reach so great,
that always, it seems, I am before it. 

Sometimes I stand at its edge
and carefully crane my neck
to get a peek inside the blackness,
attempt to make shapes or words
or anything out.

Sometimes I look up, 
let the sun shine in my eyes,
and pretend there isn’t 
an asteroid-sized hole
where green grass should be.

Sometimes I kneel down
under a nearby tree
and ask the gods that be 
to guide you and me, 
to reach down and intervene.

But here it still is,
and here I still am,
waiting for you to speak.