friends to acquaintances
together to alone
comforting streams to open oceans
warm flesh to rotting bone
from bed to soil
from earth to unknown
what will you say
when i lay in a place no longer called my home
but a graveyard
of silence and of stone

a stranger in a holiday card
voicemails become mementos
my laugh an ancient folk song
and the poems will attest to those
for the words shall live on
through dusk onto dawn
they will merely curve to your interpretation now
the neck of a swan