When I am gone, don’t waste your time

answering silly questions about

which way I parted my hair, or

whether I brushed my teeth sideways

first, or up and down.

Refer them instead to my work,

my words, the poetry that seeped

from, by then, a silent heart.

That was the real me,

the mind that longed to love,

the heart that yearned to think.

I will be somewhere where hurt

is talked about in tenses past.

I will be beyond the pain

that ends with death, yet begins again

whenever memory recalls my name.

Let me enjoy what remains

of my scud cloud days.

Their movement is by others willed.

If time is to die, let it be a suicide,

not by assassins killed.

1 April 2016