Always

She liked to get high and go away.

She liked to get very high and go

Very far away. She would say

She was going to meet us

But then she wouldn't show up:

She'd gone very far away.

She knew it probably wasn't

The best thing to live this way but

She said she felt so much better

Whenever she stationed herself somewhere

Very far away, indeed as far away

As she could get from the bitter.

We begged her to stay, to stay and to stay

And to stay, and she took to mumbling

Something by Beckett, "Better abort

Than be barren," and then she'd go

Even farther away. She said she'd

Finally reached the point, after

Her husband died early and their daughter

Lost her mind, she'd finally reached the point

Where she'd just as soon

Go really far away. This was the point

Where we were getting intolerably tired

Of her turmoil (it was beginning

To involve money) and we threatened,

Ourselves, to go away.

Then she said she could easily see how

We'd reached this point, why we were

Beginning to feel that way, and she

Leaned into us to say she'd learned

Somewhere along the way

That abandonment, one way

Or the other, that abandonment

Was in the very mathematic of matter,

That abandonment, like it

Or not, really was the only way.

She said NO ONE GETS TO STAY.

And then she started rehearsing the story,

The story about being born,

Coming to fruition, and then having

To go away, and she said we'd really

Have to come to terms with this, that this

Was the way things went always, and as we

Were putting our coats on to leave she said

She wanted to thank us, that she'd been

Surprised and delighted, really surprised

And delighted, by just how long we had

Managed to stay. And when the call came

We decided the only way to put it,

The only way really to respond

To the "Why?" of it, was to say

She'd been walking along a precipice

For a very long time

And that she had slipped and managed

To go on over, and that was all,

About her going, that any of us

Could ever really say.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Sep/Oct 2005
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