life is just as quick as death
the last breath comes by surprise
as the impact of so many years
meshes with the fragility of bones
and you are only but a dream who is now lost to me
i will whisper to you in our end times:
now i know what it means to be broken
sorry, sorry
i lost all of those apologies i meant to hand to you
like a zillion sheets of paper
an epic poem of forgiveness, eternal
but i was aquitted of these crimes before we started
and so were you.
we grew up together,
learning only to count on betrayal
learning that beauty is the only thing that never fades
growing so old in our young age
the elderly women on the front porch
of your paintings,
articulating feeling almost surgically
as a doctor might stitch returns to wholeness
someday the scars will fade
into aching longing
and i’ve heard these scars make me beautiful
like ragedy ann, all sewn up
i hesitate to believe it
so many lies of false strength
they can’t mean a motherfucking thing
but then,
life is just a fragment
of some crazy scheme
we’ve designed our own histories and
there is only one.