-Emily Dickinson
If we're no one
Unconscionable, yes, but
where's the tragedy
in death?
By what trick of light
may the forever
of after
be glimpsed, however
slightly, in the mirror
of before?
while we're here,
by what rights do we fear
this kind of non-swimming
through the ocean of no more,
or those
flowers of intangibleness
which bloom by the banks
of the unconscious?
Valuelessness
must have
no valence, at best:
nothing more
to nobody.
Ashes. Dust. Rest.