I laid myself flat before you,

Like a child, confessing my sin.

I could have made myself a stone,

The bony ridge of my spine,

A sad arc, installed forever

In your living room.

I put my failures before you.

What would love do with a blade

In its hand? You drew it lightly

At my throat, touched its tip to my heart,

then brutally, and all at once,

Cut me loose.

What of the planet, now stripped

Of its orbit? Having gained the whole expanse

Of space, and its massive loneliness,

How long does it want for the old gravity,

Despair at the lateral freefall,

Hoping, again, to be caught?

Now our dead gather; the days,

Or the nights, happy moments,

Stolen away from a brighter past.

All our hopes still stand inside of me,

Fatherless, unborn.