Everything hurts,
pleasure and pain.
Pleasure more,
because you’re not.
From my first breath,
hope meant you.
Now it’s just
ruthless awakenings.
Pain’s easier.
Already there.
But not about me.
Not about me.
To express
the ineffable:
It’s not about me.
Hope’s not a state.
It’s a mortal.
You here, I,
a fool,
thought:
It’s about me.
Now I know it’s not,
never was,
nor could have been
about me.
Nor would I ever
have wished it
otherwise.
Wishing I only now understand,
now it’s become unfulfillable,
because not about me.
The cats,
who so miss you, as I do,
knew all along,
and know it still,
that it was not about me.
Stevan Harnad