Shadows of yesterday.

With rusted lips, itchy eyes, and an aching skull,
She silently watches the smoke of her burning desires slip through delicate fingertips,
It's a sort of sluggish agony though,
Rather than a gut-wrenching moment of reality,
She experiences the truth in slow, extended phases,
Flashes of unmitigated brutality,
Every unexpected dagger arrives with a jolt of guilt,
And obliterates every last idea for redemption,
She inwardly sobs in a dark room and sees light shining through the door's outline,
The tears aren't because she's in the dark,
But rather because there's light on the other side,
Because she knows life is better than this,
Because the tiny crevices of luminosity are evidence that she's destined to remain a shadow of yesterday.