We bury the dead en masse
in a ceremony that must suffice but never really offers any closure.

Around me, the widows and orphans and lovers weep,
weep freely, without abandon,
as if their tears posses some ancient power
to resurrect the fallen or at least
make themselves forget that they once existed among the living.

My mother shakes in her bones next to me.
Her pale, sick face as they toss my father's lifeless body into a ditch of thousands
will haunt me until I exhale my final breath.

I do not cry; no misplaced tears pass my eyelashes.
I learned the moment the light escaped your twinkling, gracious eyes
that my pronounced agony will never raise the dead.
Tears are not for the deceased but for the living,
those who must remain upon this earth to remember, to ache, to long, to rail against the cruelty of fate.
Tears, like the dead, belong to the living.

Without you, I belong to neither.

I used to think it wasn't fair, my love,
that I should go on living while you,
soulless, vanish deep into the covetous arms of Death.
I still think it's unfair,
but I no longer consider myself the lucky one.  

I breathe in slowly, filling my lungs, selfishly enjoying it.
My time is limited upon this rusty, dying earth, I know that all too well.
Each second that ticks by is a reminder of how rapidly my time

*disappears.