Splendor Past

Decorated guests
Once graced her ballroom floor
Marble tile beneath their dance
Residence of opulence
Subjected now
To fateful circumstance

Crumbling walls
Find rest on rotten planks
Swallowed up in dusty plume
Shattered fragments
Of splendor past
Now soil the musty room

One single beauty clings
An anxious chandelier
While fretting grave below
One tattered rusty link
Postpones
The gruesome show

She takes a single
ragged breath
Reliving younger day
Smiling one last time
As the weary link
Gives way

The last precious portion
Now lay splinted on the floor
Rotten beams of torsion
Resisting fate no more

Spirit letting go
Collapsing in a heap
Loyal to end
Provides her restful sleep