Forgetful- A Poem

I fear so very much the thought

That I’m wasting my most precious time

That I’ve lived a lasting finite life

With some flawed hope of grand design

Whether it’s been etched upon a notepad

Or perhaps I’ve been bled upon a stone

Why even now on one last open plain 

Do I feel so terribly, so frightfully, alone

Despite every one of my best efforts

To script out the days that pass 

The moments between joy and sorrow

The life that happens there 

Is everything you’d thought you’d feel

Even though they will not last

As eternal as a dewdrop

As boundless as our love 

You’d like to think they last forever 

But black ash paints your bright white dove

It tars up every flightless feather 

It steals away all that was yours 

And in the silence of the night there’s a wonder

A stutter

The arrival of perennial fear

That there’s never really enough time for them

Those words that mean “anything at all” 

We try to tell ourselves there is

And we live life through years in which we lie

To ourselves so that we might sleep or dream

Of something better than a voluntary goodbye 

And that’s really what they are, aren’t they?

You know you don’t really have to go. 

But what a cruel world it is in which we live 

Where we perish in empty nests covered in snow 

No matter how we thought to linger

For one more second, minute, hour or year

There’s never enough wealth for even a moment 

A moment just to stay

To say perfectly the things we thought we’d said

Only to forget, to embellish, to delay 

For the sake of an imagined comfort where

We live a timeless life

One in which no pain is uttered

Because it isn’t real until we say 

That I suppose it’s time for going now

I guess after all of this 

I tried so much to cherish and share

Each and every vital thought like light you sparked

But now that I am going, I’m swallowed by a fear

I swear it wasn’t supposed to end this way

I swear I just got lost

I was going to show you my whole life in an instant 

… I swear I just forgot.