Adult Grief
by Louise Glück
Because you were foolish enough to love one place, now you are homeless, an orphan in a succession of shelters. You did not prepare yourself sufficiently. Before your eyes, two people were becoming old; I could have told you two deaths were coming. There has never been a parent kept alive by a child's love.
Now, of course, it's too late -- you were trapped in the romance of fidelity. You kept going back, clinging to two people you hardly recognized after what they'd endured.
If once you could have saved yourself, now that time's past: you were obstinate, pathetically blind to change. Now you have nothing: for you, home is a cemetery. I've seen you press your face against the granite markers -- you are the lichen, trying to grow there. But you will not grow, you will not let yourself obliterate anything.
