So what if I don’t die?
What if five years into the future,
it’s a warmer day in January
and my heart is still beating
and I’m breathing the same air,
placing my feet on the same ground
I’ve walked so many times before?
The end of the world is that bit closer
and I’m far too old for all the first times
but I still haven’t done any of the things
I was meant to do when I was ten years younger.
I’m twenty-nine, nearly three whole decades old
and nothing to show for it, bar the degree shut up
in the cupboard where I keep my obsolete jumpers
and the four hundred pages of poetry that reads like
one long suicide note that I couldn’t figure out how to end.
Perhaps there’s monotony; perhaps there’s pain and work;
perhaps things are simply worse;
I’ve gone easy sliding back into the disaster zone:
It happens all the time.
And so what if I don’t die and things go right?
I’m a real grown up person with a mind that’s ordered
and I do what I love and I’ve found someone to love
and we’ve somehow saved the world and I’m
happy, happy, happy.
It’s a limp, ill-defined notion:
I cannot fill in the detail or
add in the words between the lines.
By which I mean it’s not real.
It’s not real, it’s not real.
So what if I don’t die and I’ve pinned all my hopes on it
and all I’m left with is the bland joy of spotting
the egret or the kingfisher when I’m out on my walks
or the bland peace of sometimes visiting the island
if only for the sake of recalling the days
when other futures still seemed possible?