Preparation

The lost child is a wound that does not close.
It seeps and never fills.

Flesh does not heal,
anneals, perhaps, a while,
still love leaks out.

Emptiness, another name for grief
or time’s untimely temper,
builds up slow
like leaves or snow in winter,
wiping tracks.

There is no more reprieve,
no going back,
no argument to try,
no untried tack.

There is no lack of truth.
Death is a fact.