Broken link,
biological dead end,
an eternal withdrawal
from reality,
a once complex object
has now dwindled,
dwindled,
left nothing behind
except a smudge
like a fallen speck of soot
on a blank sheet of paper.
Her death detracts,
will forever detract,
from my own life.
Each death lies
a dreadful charge of complicity
on the living;
each death is incongenerous,
its guilt irreducible,
its sadness immortal;
a bracelet of spent brightness
around the bone.
I do not pray for her,
as I have no god;
I do not cry for her,
or for myself,
as I have no liquid reservoir;
but I sit in the silence
of this leaden night,
this infinite hostility to man,
to permanence,
to love,
remembering her,
memorising her,
something too sweet
to mourn -
the very word archaic.
DRIED UP