Terminal Felicity

Welcome to the end— 
                              if there’s such a thing as the end. 
                                                                                          The nurse swears that upon the road of the future  
                                        there’s a bend beyond which no one will ever see,  
                                                                                                                                  that one day  
          it’ll just be thunderclap & eternal nap,  
                                                                                or that like Catherine every body will candle  
the everlasting night in a thousand thorns of light— 
                                                                                                    a thousand little bonfires singing,  
                                                  What do you see? 
                                                                                as the wind with its many whips peels back the pyramids,  
          blowing building & boxcar to has-been.  
                                                                                Maybe oceans will sit empty as sandpaper cups,  
                                                                                maybe cities will sizzle hotter than a pack of Lucifers. 
Maybe the moon will spill & the sun scream  
but in the end only the nurse knows  
                                                                      what you won’t live to see.  
                                                                                                                                  Still, you wonder  
whose furnace-hot fingers will fish you from the future to fritter the very vowels of your name.  
You wonder  
                                        even as she, in the encroaching dark, lays a cool cloth upon your brow  
                                                                                               and holds your hand,  
telling you that whatever gods you’ve called into being  
will go forgotten with you.  
                                                  She knows better, the nurse.  
                                                                                                              She knows best.  
                              She whispers like the wind once whispered:  
In the end,  
you are the end— 
                                        the lisp before the longest dusk,  
                                                                                                    lipless & churched  
                              like the tongue in your truest love’s mouth. 
                                                                                                                                  Forget the oceans.  
                                                                                                                                  Forget the sun.  
                    Remember that love.  
                                                            Remember what you did with it.