sometimes they come to me at night
the ifs
and they howl in every chink
that I did not plug
with substitute thoughts
everybody around me pretends to be living
taking loans
paying interest
one way or the other
grandma has pretended for a long time to be alive
so did grandpa
mom had surgeries ’cause without them
I wouldn’t be born
(perhaps it would be for the better)
everybody around me gets saved for a moment
a mile or half of it
let’s run to the fence
let’s jump over it
—
© Frederick Rossakovsky-Lloyd, 2015