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AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News. |
The prevailing wisdom used to be to hide
the ailment from the ailing and, in so euphemizing,
ease their dying, like a fringe of trees beside
the road used to mask clear-cutting.
But the patient, intimate with tumors and waning powers,
knew, and felt the greater pain for all
the smiling, for all the cheery cards and flowers,
and wondered at the falsehood, and was appalled.
And we, too, as we hear our current leaders
asking scholars to deny how far gone
we are so we mightn’t worry—as if our rivers
weren’t in flood or our homes burned to the lawns.
As if insisting there’s no such thing as gravity,
makes the times we’re living in less heavy.
Devon Balwit edits for Asimov Press, Asterisk Magazine, and Works in Progress.
