He moved in shadows

in ghostly strides that gained on nothing 
but grains that slipped through the hands of time,

She lingered in loss

under caged cobwebs where the widow in black
had weaved her the witch from a pantomime.

She lived two floors up

an attic assembly of ageing antiques
fading to dust and distinctly untouchable,

He was basement left

a sunless space where nothing grew
disregarded, depressed and growing dysfunctional. 
 
She existed in memories 
where arms that once held her faded in frames

He shivered in silence 
too afraid to attempt, too old to make claims.
 
She cried on Saturdays 
and still shopped for two in her one roomed space, 

He ate from boxes
of pre prepared food and longed for taste.
 
She died on a Tuesday before morning mass 
he died that night from a cold he thought would pass .

They laid them together, side by side,
in the depths of the morgue, in a silence that sighed.

Two people who’d never exchanged a word, 
two people lost in the shadows of the world. 

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly