"Your Goodbye"

And I read your goodbye
anonymously, my insides
sinking slowly, unbelieving,
down deep into a sinkhole
that I was not there;
and the dewy-eyed sun rises
everyday, Hope dawning on my sheets,
a reddish glow spreading from my thorax
begging you to remember;

but your sheet was painfully void,
highlighting the blank charade
with pregnant words sprinkled
lithely on my page:
seagulls, orange marmalade, wild gestures
but no brief hint of mine
as if our time reared not the smallest leaf,
(leaving only that which my mind enshrines
and sings to those sorrowing birds)
none of the wise words uttered before death;
remember, remember what you whispered
through the waves' soft mist?
or the little boy outside who tried to sell us
children's shoes, meandering from table to table,
remember? I am like him, pandering
to a girl with too many shoes;

for sailing with sails unfurled
saying what æther fills my lungs
what wakes my dreams from slumber
would burst the seams and cost too much to bare;
so i choose this, i prefer this,
this plebeian oblivion.
Yet we know that children grow
that shoes get worn and weary
and new ones take their place;
then, it seems, the shoe-panderer,
though breathless and fallen
by a melancholy fit, will find
a quiet corner to sit and breath
and review the feast and the wine and
the many-crowned carouse.


Viduus Moore