.

 

Left it all behind there.

All that sand from my shoes.  All shaken off.

All that salt from my hair.  From my eyes, too.

Nothing stuck as I shouted it all away.

Yelled at it, but quietly, you know, inside.

Sounded like nothing worked.  Nothing did.

It died unassisted.  After all I did to revive it.

 

Even the pain went away by itself.  Overnight.

No longer mine.  We disowned each other.

It used to embrace me, it was my old mother.

It was a warm facelessness, a punched cushion.

I didn’t have to make it up.  Scattered feathers.

I have proof.  I told everybody so.

Everyone could see how well I carried it.

 

Left it all behind there.

Half my life gone.  Strands of moaning rain.

I had gotten so used to it, the ordinariness of it.

The cold familiar arbitrariness of it.

I used to make coloured screen shots of it.

Long rectangles and graphs of explanatory text.

Now that it has flatlined, I wonder if I’ll miss it.