The Lonely Crowd (Part 3)

Suspended in darkness, no up or down,

Just a void, without sight or sound.

My lonely spirit now roams here unrestrained,

But freedom in death's grip left me unexplained.

Was this my fate, to drown on my own?

When a compassionate hand could have pulled me home.

Regret wells up for chances not seized,

For cowering weakness, afraid to be me.

I lament time wasted strapped in fear's chains,

Trapped by anxieties, worries, and pains.

If only I broke free and stood tall,

I wouldn't be drifting in this black pall.

But the grave makes equals of every man,

Coward and hero when their time's span.

Here wrapped in death's cloak, no distinction remains,

Of my decisions, my losses and gains.

Though life has now left me be in this tomb,

I sense my story still churns back above.

An echo of my memory tossed between them,

Words unsaid, mysteries left unsolved then.

Their conversations turn to reminisce,

Of how they wished that they could have done this.

Regret seeps in for chances not seized,

To help me break surface when I was in need.

They talk of signs missed, words left unspoken,

Moments passed by, promises left broken.

Wondering if they could have stilled my despair,

As it pulled me under in my loneliness there.

But words of should have, would have, don't resurrect,

They can't reverse the years of neglect.

And the crowd moves on, leaving me behind,

A cautionary tale uttered in resigned sighs.

My legacy reduced to moralized lines,

To remind them how isolation undermines.

I fade into memory, my full life unseen,

Known only by the surface they could have peeled.

This newfound regret little comfort imparts,

To my disconnected soul torn apart.

Their hindsight still leaves me adrift in the mist,

Of this barren void, lifeless, empty, and missed.

But release from this hell perhaps is the cost,

Of never being known, though they've wistfully lost.

At least we're united in some small sad way,

Longing for what could have been in that fray.

Two paths of regret never to entwine,

Their grief overshadowed by what could have been mine.

Here in the still silence I start to forget,

The living's muted pain with their endless upset.

So I'll linger in nothing's sweet relief,

No fear or sadness, no joy or grief.

Just a non-being, null of regret,

An afterlife shaped by choices I made.

My story now adrift in the silent fog,

A specter of solitude, sole keeper of my epilogue.

Freed from the pain, the crowds now erased,

No guilt or redemption for the path I chose or paced.

At least in oblivion, we're all the same,

No hierarchy, just souls without name.

A liberation at last to dissolve away,

Finding strange peace in nothingness' portrait so gray...