Mourning doves built a nest on the patio last week, and I knew it was time
I've been watching and waiting
Wishing that the choice wouldn't be mine

Sleep—sleep, sleep, please sleep
Well, now you're drowsy in my arms
And I'm lost in the way your eyes blink

You're forever with me—etched elegantly into my skin
But I've been watching and waiting
And my arms are emptier now than they've ever been

Sleep—sleep, sleep, shhh sleep
Midnight vigil because I can't—
Still lost in the way your eyes blinked

Mourning doves are laying eggs on the patio—new life, soon-to-be, under our roof
Well, I'll be watching, and I'll be waiting
And I'll be naming the brood after you two

brrEXIT
by Michael R. Burch

what would u give
to simply not exist—
for a painless exit?
he asked himself, uncertain.

then from behind
the hospital room curtain
a patient screamed—
"my life!"

Originally published by Setu. Keywords/Tags: brexit, death, exit, suicide, euthanasia, quick, painless, hospital, patient, hospice, final, curtain, existence, nonexistence

Aflutter
by Michael R. Burch

"This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh."—Yahweh

You are gentle now, and in your failing hour
how like the child you were, you seem again,
and smile as sadly as the girl
                                                    (age ten?)
who held the sparrow with the mangled wing
close to her heart.
                               It marveled at your power
but would not mend.
                                      And so the world renews
old vows it seemed to make: false promises
spring whispers, as if nothing perishes
that does not resurrect to wilder hues
like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend
but cannot fail to keep.
                                         Now in your eyes
I see the end of life that only dies
and does not care for bright, translucent lies.
Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend
together, as before, then lay to rest
these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast.

Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and The Eclectic Muse

NOTE: This is a poem about a couple committing suicide together. The “eerie pact” refers to a bible verse about the rainbow being a “covenant,” when the only covenant human beings can depend on is the original one that condemned us to suffer and die. That covenant is always kept perfectly. Keywords/Tags: Gentle, heart, flutter, aflutter, death, dying, suicide, euthanasia, pact, tears, hospice, hemlock, arsenic, rest in peace

Death isn't casting
not a staged performance
it has its own deadline

Now
"The euthanasia"
passive,
fundamental right
to die with dignity,
when no possibility,
is legitimate...

I wonder
If "the unrequited love"
depressive,
sentimental
A freewill
without felicity
was ever illegitimate?

Lying in a bed,
But it's not my own,
All I can think about,
Is wanting to go home,
But it's come too far,
It's beyond repair,
And so I tell them,
'Please end my despair,'
I close my eyes,
They pull the plug,
It seems my grave,
Has just been dug,
Away I drift,
Away I fade,
And now to rest,
I can be laid.

Ten years miserably passed before..."At last!"
Four eyes dizzely cast into blue and brown,
and four, no, six legs on the ground.
Wistfully down a park laid sidewalk, we walked
to meet one another, blissfully.

We walked inside the dried canal, a river of the desert.
It hurts that we go there, no more, to flirt
with the dirt and our companion... infinity.
Is it you with me as I find kin company
in the molecules of divinity?

Repeatedly, I go searching the vicinity and nearby
For anything with similarity that I can call you by.
Any tree, light, shadow or star in the proximity
of where we met that belonged to you and me.
Or a feeling of solidarity that I cannot see.

Son, don't let me now survive ten years expeditiously.
Destructively alive, left with the intangiblity of life
that we left at that decision tree at 5:45.
Repetitiously I continue to apologize,
but apologies won't bring you back to life.

On thin, white sheets, today, I lay
Each IV drop, brings me dismay
There's something I have longed to say...
You pull the plug and make my day.