Sentinels.

Behind the barricades, tucked away beyond the layers of the impregnable buffer,

secreted in the unshakeable edifice, hewn deep into the rock of solitude,

countless thoughts blur, hazily scurrying past,
adrift on the breeze, yesteryears embers that cannot last.

These embers, these flurries of memory, escape high above the ramparts of this fortress of stunted, shackled thought,

fleeing the fears, the tears streaming down eyes unblinking, eyes devoid of light, eyes rendered blind, leaving grainy photographs etched in the receding mind.

All these memories, this nostalgic tugging, sewn into the detritus of what was once beloved, of what was once dear and true,

all those sun-kissed moments, once woven by infinite tendrils of hope, lie strewn here and there, and everywhere in between, all those dreams now merely flotsam and jetsam, thrashed upon the waves of the ocean so jagged, so stinging, yet so boundless in its shades of aquamarine blue.

Yet there exists, in folded recesses, layered in shrouds, wrapped in papyrus,

armoured sentinels, mutely grasping, onto all that was once all of you, onto all that was once all of me,

armoured sentinels,

standing guard,
fiercely protecting against forgetting,

fierce sentinels,
holding firm onto the persistence of memory.