The First Echo - Memory

Old wounds rift through time,
whispers lost in amber light--
the past draws blood still.

But laughter returns,
like sun spilling through the blinds--
warmth where shadows lay.

Memory takes flight,
feathers singed, but never gone--
reborn from the grief.

Joy and pain entwined,
a flame that devours and heals--
cycles of the soul.

In the smoke, I see
who I was and who I am--
phoenix made of years.
​

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My answer to The Riddle by my friend Brian aka MadDogMoore:

What walks, wounds, waits, and watches?
I am not alive, but I birth the living.
I am not dead, but I carry the dead.
I have no hands, yet I hold you.
I have no eyes, yet I haunt your gaze.
I feed on silence. I speak without sound.
I am feared, forgotten, worshiped, and drowned.
You shape me. You flee me. You seek me. What am I?