sometimes we don’t see the end
I mean, how could we?
eyes filtered with shades of red
muscles jazz-handing
skin zinging from touches
that move dreams into concrete
futures: marriage, house, baby
the inevitability of hardships
laughable because love
because in love everything
is possible except the end
and this is not a denial of death
because love cradles death
a lullaby of knowing… no, this
end towers up out of the blue
a giant vibrating shock that
scorches the thick pages of
first-love’s fairytale book
and the heart tremors
then shatters and then
and then the scars
eventually become devices
hope-holders, cartographies
of survival, grand odysseys
that cushion the next ends
VANESSA SHIELDS 