NEW POEM: INTESTATE

INTESTATE


Whatever we fancy, our dead do not in fact
seek redemption. They are not troubled
by what they left undone. We who breathe
and breathe again, involuntarily living on --
We who cannot help but write story onto
every surface, we who bury with quiet haste
and walk away to make ourselves take a meal --
We hold up a severed relationship like a quilt
which grows heavier with each year, a cover
that eventually pins us to sweaty sheets.
We pretend we need to forgive them, as if
anything at all mattered to them now. We want
that final apology, we milk memory for a caress
and rueful grin which pays off our devotion.
To believe they are done with us is to accept
they never changed, not once, and now it is
too late. No trunk could hold our rage
if we knew how they could not care less.

　
©  Maggie Jochild, 18 September 2012, 2:08 am