Maybe there's no need
to stubbornly progress;
maybe all
that distance is
is your longing
for some certain person
finally expressed
as a clean, stoic
integer—
and multiplied by
the quite humbling
square root
of all
your most trusted
counterfactuals.
*
Maybe nobody—
yet—
is entirely hopeless
because no one
is immortal;
and between those
immovable
brownish red doors
which stand, so grim,
at the beginning
and end of things,
the rest
of what exists
is called (how
merciful):
the middle.
