(but you never came to
claim me)
so I set about to lose
it,
thinking you would find
me
littered on the
sidewalk,
(as though I were some
discarded label fading
brown)
pick me up and take me
home.
But I guess you never
passed that way. Or you
didn't feel
responsible.
I laid upon that
sidewalk,
baking in the sun until
the
ink faded and you could
barely read the words
that had been bleached
away in patient
waiting:
“I have no man, when
the water is troubled,
to put me in the pool.”
Soon, when this body
fails, and
you find it littered in
the earth,
I pray you'll have the
decency,
if not to take me home,
to
pick me up and throw me
out.
