Red Skies and Retrospect
Heads tilt back in synchrony,
faces caught in the afterglow—Finally the denial breaks,
a collective gasp as everyone belowRealizes blue was always fragile,
a privilege mistaken for fact,
And now red suffocates the horizon, an omen no prayer can distract.The sky,
a wound across memory’s page, reflects in every car window,
Each streetlight twisting shadows longer,
shivering like an echo.People stagger through
dusk with hands shielding their eyes,
No more blaming the forecast, no more pretending this is surprise.
A grandmother stares from her stoop, counting regrets in trembling hands,
Every missed forgiveness, every word unsaid,
every promise unmanned.Young lovers clutch closer,
sensing absence press against skin,
The comfort of routine collapsing,
the ache of what could have been.Regret is a contagion,
passed in whispers across cracked sidewalks,
Old grudges and lost years reanimated,
stalking behind as each person walks.Husbands recall laughter
they let curdle into fights, wives taste apologies left unsent,
Friends ache for chances unseized, all burned up in crimson intent.
The air hums with confessions never spoken, grief unprocessed and raw,
A thousand faces searching the clouds for mercy, for loopholes,
for flaw.In this red-lit gloom, every old sin is magnified,
each betrayal backlit and real,
Mistakes parade through memory, each one more vivid, impossible to heal.If only,
the words pass like prayers, if only there’d been time to atone,
If only kindness had been currency,
if only we’d known—What we held could vanish in one hemorrhaging night,
That all certainties can be stolen by a crimson light.
The young ask why, and the elders fail to answer,
Silent in awe of this final, unanswerable cancer.Strangers linger in alleys,
afraid to go home,
Haunted by the ghosts they summoned alone.Children draw the sun in red,
confused by the hue,
Parents lie about the sky, still pretending the lie
is true.Streetlights blink between now and then,
And every second without blue feels stolen, condemned.
Red skies and retrospect—now vision is seared,
Every selfish instinct, every “later” revered.The light stains every window,
every prayer, every bed,
A scarlet accounting of the words never said.Grief turns tangible,
clinging to backs like ash,
Old photographs blur in the scarlet flash.All the chances missed,
all the love never risked,
Etched across faces, lost in the mist.
A world that ignored warning now bows to the cost,
Eyes finally open, too late for what’s lost.No sermons,
no comfort—just raw recognition,
A crimson confession, a final admission.Regret isn’t sacred,
but it outlives the sun,
Bleeding through memory when the damage is done.Red skies
and retrospect—now the horizon is clear,
The color of endings, of every wasted year.As the world turns crimson,
silent and cold,
We mourn the blue we traded for gold.