Those Things We Lost

Coward, I am

At the first hint of something turned sour I

Retreat like the sun beneath the waves at dusk

I am not Strong

I cannot think of warm fur against cold skin

For fear that I’ll remember her, and her, and him, and him

For they, so temporary and so enormous,

As quick and powerful as a supernova,

They were gone in the span of time that

Must seem to You like a millisecond

I cannot think of legs trotting that morphed to wheels creaking

Or the way he is no longer lucid at the best of times

Or the way it will feel when he, too, is gone

In the span of a Heavenly millisecond

Coward that I am, I turn to prose

As a petal shrugs off dew and turns to the first rays of sunlight               

I cannot take a lover for fear that the hands from before will rise from the mattress

And choke me with the words I will never let pass my uneven lips

To Love is to Lose

To Love is to be Weak

And I will never be Weak again