Fugue
Don’t get us wrong.
We do pound for what has passed,
But more so all that we passed by—
Unthanking, unknowing,
When what we had was ours.
There was another gap that choked us:
The simple gift of farewell.
Goodbye, by which we say to another—
Thanks for offering your life into mine.
By Goodbye, we truly mean:
Let us be able to say hello again.
This is edgeless doubt:
Every cough seemed catastrophe,
Every proximate person a potential peril.
We mapped each sneeze & sniffle,
Certain the virus we had run away from
Was now running through us.
We slept the days down.
We wept the year away,
Frayed & afraid.
Perhaps that is what it means
To breathe & die in this flesh.
Forgive us,
For we have walked
This before.
History flickered in
& out of our vision,
A movie our eyelids
Staggered through.
We added a thousand false steps
To our walk tracker today
Because every step we’ve taken
Has required more than we had to give.
By Hello, we mean:
Let us not say goodbye again.
There is someone we would die for.
Feel that fierce, unshifting truth,
That braced & ready sacrifice.
That’s what love does:
It makes a fact faced beyond fear.
We have lost too much to lose.
We lean against each other again,
The way water bleeds into itself.
This glassed hour, paused,
Bursts like a loaded star,
Belonging always to us.
What more must we believe in.
Submitted by Johnnie Rodriguez
