A divine creature sweetly dying
(The swan with sprained wings
and bald spots from digging her broken beak into the skin beneath the feathers)
Falls apart no more or less gracefully than a China-made toy.
Her pieces, once disassembled, make tragically languid laps around the surface of the lake.

Arbitrarily I decided that day would be THE day,
The day I stopped loving you.
I decided instead to go floating.
But to be honest with you,
I didn't feel like a swan.
I felt like garbage.

As the day grew to night, I realized it —
No one was coming to pick me up.