Nothing is always a hard and fast rule or outcome
we cannot predict as well as we might think
divining over two sticks to find the source
I know this as I know my own heartbeat
for myself and many others
not having children makes you hold onto yourself too much
you value the debris and memories and fixtures of your past
with emotional microscope, unable to grow beyond reflection
as if they were your child’s blanket, your child’s first tooth
you look at self portraits
feeling the emotion a little less of love approximating love
self-love isn’t always narcissism
it reduces however like a sauce
until there is less than more
while loving another expands
until it lifts us off our feet and sends us into the air
that kind of love frees us from preoccupation
obsessing and writing ourselves over and over
this is my life, this is my dog, this is how I am, look at me!
your gaze shifts to another, you learn how little you matter
how to open yourself up, love someone else without end
suddenly you are not important and unconditional is
it is funny to imagine my mother knowing this more than I
it is sad to think she was a mother and we do not have that in common
she has walked where I will never walk
and though it was hard for her to accept
she knows more from having been than I ever will
I who still hold onto, my own memories of me
the only child who wasn’t meant to thrive
living up to her proportion
not obsession or self-love but a lack of other
diminishment in legacy
there will be no follow-up
no future after I am dust
the line will simply close
like it was cauterised and sealed, never having existed
at times I feel I owe those in the past
something more than quiet death
or history forgotten and emptied
dressing corpses with semblance
but I have nothing more to offer
no search for fame or history
I am simply myself
who at the close of day will inherit the sum
all who came before, all who will not carry on
an envelope licked and sealed
sent away to the dead letter depot
I look at my hands they are empty and long
I think they look wistful as the feeling inside of me does
if I could stop considering myself
hording small memories in tight boxes
holding on because if I let go
there is just an empty glass
neither half full nor half emptied
gone is the liquid of the future
I am it … this is all
now
and it feels disquieting
wrong at times
to be the last of my kind
I think of how it will only grow stronger
as they die and I remain
watching memories like old films damaged by time
this may seem bleak but if you stand solitary
watching the entire world play out their multiplication
like a concert with different scenes and costumes
you feel yourself evaporating knowing there is nothing more
no heaven for the empty. no hell for the sinner
and purgatory
is here on earth surely
I suppose that’s why I do what I can
now
sometimes that is not possible because
my heart is wrapped in butchers paper and thick with sorrow
a doom perhaps, just a shadow of future
when I am strong enough I stir and reach
when I am weak I stay so still air is louder than me
at times I do not exist though I live
I am just a poor transfer
a smudge of a fingerprint left on glass in an empty house
vanquished of plan
what will I do when they depart?
how will I cope being the last?
it was my intention to gather other lives around me
a blanket of DNA my home-grown spun family
nature didn’t permit such outcome, possibly
with our inheritance this was less cruel
than leaving children to grow into
miniature versions of disease’s burden
the curse and the lightning of uncertainty
mental illness heating mercury
like fevered flag
some would say, abuse ends
when there are no more left to collect
it is a relief to think of sleeping undisturbed
unaware of beginning and end
but at night I admit
sometimes that terrible fear curls around my neck
and I remember being a child
alone in the dark
knowing one day
it will be
permanent
as I am
the last
TheFeatheredSleep 