Poetry: The Forgotten

For the persona poem challenge at dVerse.

The clock on the tower struck a grim 12 high noon

And I observed the lunch-goers like I do every day

They laugh and they chuckle and they talk on their phones

Without even bothering to spare a glance my way 

You can see, can't you?

I sit in the shadows, contemplating my life

Wondering how it was this place and time came to be

There was a point, one dim past, where I was a lunch-goer too

But that past is in tatters, I am now only what you see

But you don't see, do you?

I remember the day when my world fell to pieces

I came home to my wife, who was walking out the door

And it was only gradually, after days of denial

That I realized she wasn't coming back anymore

I didn't see either, you know?

And somehow, some way, in some time, it came to this

My emotions were so broken that I fell away from life

I hit that non-life-rock-bottom and could never climb out

It was a pit so-far deep as the depths of my strife

But you can't see that, can you?

And now I sit all day, underneath the sun, wind, and rain

My hopes of recovery long dashed, long, long ago

I gave up on the world in a damn far distant past

And the world, so scorned, she also let me go

That's why you don't see me, you know?

The clock on the tower is about to strike 12 midnight

Yet I keep sitting even while the mercury descends

Because at this point, house, wealth, life ruined

I can do nothing else but hope for the end

But you'll never see that, will you?