All the flowers in the field are dead, she said,
And you could die just the same on a sunny day.
You, who have come so far and found no meadow of hope,
Only fear in faces of the wilted,
Keep looking and looking,
Rehearsing the scene in the shower over and over
Until there is no difference between the water and the words
And the water and your body.
Here is a cathedral of dead flowers for you to keep your things—
All your little things.
Here is a house of memories to forget in—
An image of a past so dead, it is not even past.
And here is what we are left with—
A dull remembrance soon forgotten.
Desire and desire
And desire as the root of desire.
But when you kneel before forgiveness,
You remember the wilted.
And in your evening of life,
You remember the wilted
How I feel about God changes with the weather, she said.
On days like this one,
I imagine a being
All knowing and all powerful
But still in need of a good cry.
Here is every pair of shoes you’ve worn and all the places you’ve been.
Here is not a neat little ending in a final conceit.
Here is only a nameless collection of all the little things you have done.
All because Eve ate that fucking apple, she said.
No, actually she said,
This is a story so old it doesn’t have a name anymore—
So just think of me as a kind of love
Superimposed on a landscape of indifference
A flower in a wilted room.
A soft evening’s walk home.
Yes, the living were once dead too
And they remember it not as absence,
But as silence.
Here, then, is not the lament for a chance at rebirth.
Here is the gift from a flower to the garden.
Here is something to hold in your hands—
Something you can only ever hold in your hands.
The world is no longer inviolate.
The river, always a river until it is not.
Your body is not perfect, she said.
It is not even your own.
But you must love anyway.
Even when no one is looking.
Even in silence.
Here is the last story of your silence—
The closest place to a meadow of hope you can know how to find.
Here is that little box in your closet,
Where you keep all your favorite memories.
Here is an epilogue for everything that you are—
A moment of brief remembrance amid entropy.
If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around,
It does make a sound.
Even if only for himself
Even if only for a moment
He proclaims
I am here.
I exist.
I am here, she said.
And you are here
Even in silence
Even if no one is looking.
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