Bodies are failing
there are infinite ways
we could turn inside out,
lose confidence.
I walked through,
saw you.
My mind was somewhere else
and it was only my eyes
that saw a body
failing.
I couldn’t pull my mind
back to say hello before you were gone.
Later, when you told me I ignored you
the pieces at the edge of my memory
held nothing.
And your body, failing, whispered
in my cold ear,
“You looked right at me.”

The human condition,
as I have heard it explained…
She wrote that humans
are the things with the eyes.
She said what we do is we rely on them too much.
We were beautiful but we weren’t.
We would never forget
when our loves one saw us, but didn’t
say hello.

For Sara Fisher