you threw down poems from your window
and after a century of travel
they arrived at my door bundled in a small book
like a stack of personal letters
wrapped carelessly in white tissue
and tied together by tattered ribbons of faded gold
i suspect you never really understood
what those cruel missives
floating down from your room
might do
to a young boy
who roamed through your words
over and over again
looking, longing for some solution
besides a willing carriage ride with death
how was i to know
that it was all conjecture and the caprice of a recluse?
the idle talk of someone
who chose to live her life alone
someone not really lonely at all
someone who enjoyed
just a casual and serene non-existence
because purgatory is easy
when it is what you wish for
but you see
i never got to choose the walls of my capture that made me tiny
inside a world that grew smaller and smaller
because that was all that i knew or believed was possible
i suppose you never realised
any better than the others
that what you wrote
would validate my darkest thoughts
and violate an evolving imagination
a consciousness that i left crumpled
with your poems
beneath my childhood bed
today, i still wonder why you lacked the courage
to leave all your poetry behind
leave it all in your sunny room
and instead throw yourself out the casement of your window
and in that leap
become yourself a parable
for all the frightened eyes
that look wistfully
through a cold pane of glass
see life and turn away
from its blinding light
