Killed Boy, Beautiful World
        For Aaron Campbell

How slender the tether
between life and not-life,
between the big-eyed boy
of your childhood play,
and the call that tells you
he is lying beneath a sheet
waiting to become ash.
How ruthless with beauty
the world seems, clouds
tumbling in streams of white,
the sky dappled, then clear,
then blotted with rain; the news
of death and more death
streaming—some familiar
or foreign blood damning
every wet curve of the globe.
Still, you want to hold on to it,
this life that breaks you again
and again. You want to know
that poised as the world is
to drive you to your knees
with anguish or ecstasy,
you are in it to stay
as long as it will have you—
as long as you have anything left
to lose.

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Copyright © 2020 Lauren K. Alleyne All rights reserved
from Honeyfish
New Issues Poetry & Prose
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission