Wind crumples in my fingers,
fatal touch of skin and it flutters
into the dust of centuries;
I wonder why it dies
so motionless, breathless by definition—
it lacks the schemes and dreams
promising restrictive freedom,
flaws edgelessly relentless,
magnificent,
unlike the children
within whose lungs it dwells.

They snap in sequence,
crisply crippled by an airless winter
scratching at the concrete in their bones
until glass shells rupture,
splinter circulating in synchrony
to open bloody little smiles in their veins,
laughter leaking from nubile wrists
pressed against a merry-go-round.

But I just watch,
resigned to passive irony inside;
I can see from icy windows that they're
falling from bare apple trees
and winter rooftops so pristine
into the juicy dry of unripe asphalt
clinging to milk pale hips
fruitlessly youthful.

They criticize my dissonance
with nursery rhyme ears
so accustomed to mellifluous fairytales
ending in happily ever afters,
unaware that I can't care
beyond my doubts
vining up into a thick mind
fraught with compromise.

There are going away people
and there are left behind people,
but everybody's secrets are the same.

They're join my obsolescence someday.