Julia Norrish
Is it peculiar
to us big-brained humans to appreciate something most
only in the elongated seconds before
it shatters?
Do other animals
possess such a fickleness? Flagrant, vapid regret
for a thing so different now that it
lies in shards.
Or, is their intelligence
stored in the arms that grasp, fingers that hold, lips that suck,
mouths that breathe knowing each moment for what it is
not was, or could be?
Perhaps life is
in the soft, low, blue blows and swirls a building makes
as the wind fails to pass all the way through it,
crying into the cracks.
"Maybe",
you said, "we die slowly, and
not all at once, sending parts of ourselves ahead
to heaven."
Once whole, it held. Broken, it has no use
though I love it more now.
Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow with the Life Riting Collective on 21 July 2022
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