​I lived
    never whole
    but in bits and parts
    a life of interrupted starts
The assembly
    of my days, their meaning
    a bequeathal of soot
    I leave you
 
Life was
   an act of aching
   the coaxing of an ember
   breathless, trying to remember
Something lost
   love? arthritis is
   but innocence bending
   at the end
 
Death is
   liquid craving bone
   a smile upon your lips
   but this? an apocalypse
One embraces
   again, again the memory
   ―and absence―
   of you