52509

There is a note for me playing hide-and-go-seek
in between the wall and the hotel bed,
but the author is done playing
and driving home

because continuing after losing is too hard,
people are still breathing and posing for photographers,
popping balloons, asking for names or numbers
and living, and sometimes life would be

so much easier if they didn’t,
if the world stopped the way a clock
doesn’t tick after it’s dropped off a balcony,
lying there as a small jumble of twisted metal and wooden splinters,
a cracked face with fingerless hands

and all blessedly, gloriously still.