At the end of everything,
you realize there are a great many more things
to end, and you have, in fact, walked
from this ending into another, have
always been walking, tripping down
a staircase of time on the ends
of your numb little legs. Every step
seems like the last step, the way
every freckle seems like cancer,
the way every blackbird
seems crow-like, every crow
ravenesque. You don’t know
what you would do with wings
that large and darkling,
with a real Nevermore. Still,
life is a poetry book of haiku,
just one motion, just
three lines, and the page is ripped
out before you can
count the syllables,
before you can comprehend
that here you are, at
the next poem,
where you can find something like half a billion
endings, most of them your cells,
kicking tiny cellular buckets, completely unaware
of letters ending words ending lines
and poems ending, sentences
crashing to a stop, the period
like a dead fly on a dead
body: bloodless, breathless,
ink dried and corpse kexy
(a dead adjective
meaning withered and brittle, invented
two century-endings ago).
Even being born
must have felt an ending,
sublime and absolute. Imagine—
air thinning, light pouring in
as warmth pours out. Lungs
ripped open. Intestine
ripped away. Weight so cataclysmic
your head contorts on your neck.
When you first throw wide your mouth,
you think you will cry
forever. Oh, little darling,
it’s all endings from here.
Aimee Lowenstern
Aimee Lowenstern (she/her) is a twenty-five year old poet living in America. She has cerebral palsy and a chihuahua. Her work can be found in several publications, including Fifth Wheel Press and The Banshee Journal.
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