Letter to the World

I need to write a letter apologizing to the world.

Dear World,

I am sorry for not paying more attention to you this year.

I tried my best, but not really.

See, it was hard because the world inside my body was broken.

My heart began to fall apart

and as a result, my spirit

that used to flow

like Niagara

broke slowly this year, slowly,

like a tear that hesitates

to make its way down my cheek

because the journey is long and painful,

like how it feels when a tattoo is being born

on your shaking wrist.

Speaking of tattoos, I did my best to tattoo Japan’s tsunami

in my brain, those 18,000 lives swallowed

in a few breaths, like plankton

gulped by a killer whale.

I did my best to tattoo in my heart that video of the toddler girl in China

run over by a truck and then another truck,

then ignored by 8 passersby,

as if she were the invention of human roadkill

as if children were meant to be crushed,

the way baby cows were meant to have their brains bashed

so their mothers’ milk could be poured

down human throats instead.

Dear World,

Your love is lacking.  I am lacking. 

But that’s okay, perhaps I want to lack,

like a mosquito that doesn’t get its fill

and fails to explode

into a million pieces of a life

that becomes forgotten

like yesterday’s news that spills, stainlessly,

on your earthy body.

Final Release

I was like lazy leaves,

refusing to change into the bold shade of gold

when our seasons decided to change.

I wanted to cling

to your embracing branches

and stay in those forever winter

days,

and when winter left,

I still clung,

and grew crinkled

and weak,

dangling

with some strand of a hope

that a reversal of gravity

would cry out

and I’d find myself embraced

in your branches once again. 

And now, the seasons have finished out their year,

and I have no choice but to move on

after shedding the last tear,

to be the leaf not so lazy, not so crinkled,

not weak,

to continue through the wind,

instead of decomposing as we speak.

As hard as it has been to let us decease,

I know I must exhale you, and accept

this final release.