Life is made up of
pit stops filled with
people you knew.
Long stretches of road
between, empty of all
but your own company
until you stop again
and meet new people.
You stay with them
for a time but eventually
all relationships end,
even the ones we
promised each other
were forever.
Maybe especially those.
We make promises of
time we cannot live
long enough to fulfill
with the casual unkindness
of a natural disaster,
mercurial as a sudden
daylight summer storm.
And so we bow, hand in hand,
with the current round
of players fretting the stage
with us, or else slip away
with an Irish Goodbye
in spite of what we always
said we had meant to each other.
Still, we go back to that
dusty, lonesome stretch
of jagged road and head for
distant horizons.
And we feel bad,
maybe, in measured hours,
but mostly not at all.
Life moves on and
we find this sitcom's
cast of characters from
school or various jobs
replaced by the next
group from school or work.
Group chats will one
day go inactive and
the constant chirp of
digital friendship will
be as silent as a confession
of teenage affection caught in the
back of a young man's throat.
Some days we'll hear a
familiar laugh or see
a once discussed TV show
and it'll draw it out:
we'll have moments
when we miss the days
when...
But, don't let yourself
dangle when you hang up
on those thoughts,
because it may be sad
when one thing dies
but it isn't really the end.
Nothing is ever really
The End.