We must give ourselves over to “not knowing”
Not knowing what comes next
How this will all end
If there will be an end.
We startle at this gross insult to our abbreviated selves.
Our planned obsolescence
Was known to us when were yet embryos
And we carried it
Like a hard carapace cradling our soft viscera.
Now, you walk down a street
And, feeling another’s outbreath on your cheek,
You remember this Faultline
This cleft in the trajectory of your life.
For you too will wear out,
Like a tattered robe,
Cast down on the ground.
Until, naked, you return
To who you were before you became you.
David Hanig 