Deathbed Poet

[banal_slave]

i want them to say that it endured her
seventy-six years. i want them to say
she tried a million times, and she was
still just getting started. i want them
to say it was never simple, not for a
second, not for a footstep, not for all
of the shortcuts on the planet, i want
them to say that, if she had died just
five hours sooner, she would have wasted
her whole life. i want them to say that
none of it was ever a waste, not a word,
not a mutter, not a single mouthful.

i want them to say that it was all growing
up to this, the seaweed, the echoes, the
dragonfly spines, they were stepping
stones and ladder rungs, they were radiant
but catastrophes. i want them to say that
she was one in a billion, if only for
a minute. i want them to say that nothing
has ever been the same since the day
she disappeared. i want to say that nothing
has changed except for that one thing,
that chunk of paper that she crumpled
with perspiring fists, displaying one final
sacrifice to the world, one last present to
the penniless, the fainthearted, the baffled,
a handful of inky alms. i want them to say that
it found someone and for once it mattered.

i want them to say she always said,
i hope to write my first masterpiece on my deathbed.