“We cannot choose when we are born;
But we can choose when it’s time to check out”
She said
It was a fair point, I guess
Though if it hadn’t have been, I wouldn’t have bothered arguing
I’d long ago decided that she’d won
Whatever cause she was fighting, she’d won
And was only waiting for her to get bored and move on
She’d been hanging around the flat for weeks
Like a shadow
And even the goldfish seemed weary of her
Though she was fine in the sack
And made an excellent mushroom omelette
It was her youth that was the issue
And it was nobody’s fault;
I knew it; she knew it;
All those opinions, that naïveté
Wasted with only me as the audience
I didn’t want it, and certainly didn’t deserve it
I put change in charity boxes and greeted old ladies in the street
Though the flat had plenty of room for two
Myself and my solitude had called dibs when I rented it
So we sat through the days of that long hot summer
Drinking wine and trying not to murder one another
Whatever words I had, they were wasted on this audience
So I grunted single word responses to everything
And kept to myself, desperate to sleep alone
I threw away all my money at blackjack every night
And that wasn’t enough, so stopped taking care of my self
And worked at building a belly and
One night I fell through the door and woke up in the hallway next lunchtime
There was nothing in the house to say she’d ever been there
“I always thought I’d be discovered AFTER my death” you said, Hank, and you were right
I put down your first book, then discovered you’d been gone a month
So I was happy to finally prove someone right.
