Advent

I am coming, my departed loves
Cassandra and Gabriel and Dante and Belle
and you! Although you be not gone to that sleep
but to you I am gone regardless
I am coming soon
Wait for me there that our love may be renewed
there are only the two of us left now
Wash and myself
and the insufferable grief I feel
for your silence and callousness
is immeasurably made worse
by this loss today
My reasons to continue have been halved
in the fell swoop of fate
and a malicious universe
if I have defiance it is soft and broken
like the last words of the condemned
and not so much a railing ‘gainst night
but a rolling into it
I am coming, my departed loves
let them mix my ashes with yours
let then, my capacity for love — unparalleled
be the legacy of this life
if my ability to love is beyond measure
then so too is my capacity for pain
and this grief feels like
the camel’s straw
added to the load you placed there
these five months past
I am coming, my departed loves
the dead and the silent one
I am coming and there is no blaze of light
I know that well from experience
and if there was a heaven then you would be there
all of you
in some personal realm of love and joy
but alas there is not
and we depart as alone as we come to the world
Yet I journey
I am coming
I am coming
I am coming