"Everyone's dying," Said the Child in Poetry

"Everyone's dying,"
Said Young Soul to Young Mind,
Born of Mother's mother and father, of Father's mother and father, and of fate
And future
And love.

"Life,
Flowing and spinning and whirling,
Turning sharply around the many bends,
Tangles the red string,
And everyone
(Or no one at all)
Is dying,
Born into happiness and degenerating into suffering."

So said Young Body to Young Mind.

"Yes,
When Mother's mother laid down in bed,
When the hopscotch and card-games and long talks ceased,
When the moon, stars and even the sun waned;

And people were likened to dogs, raving and snarling,

It all seemed to fall apart.

Because she was dying,"

So said Young Heart to Young Mind.

"Flowers,
Fall evenings,
April afternoons and Summer mornings;

Cardboard boxes, pretending to be foxes,
Acting out, running about, figuring it out,

Sitting close together and drinking hot chocolate
In even the most bitter of winters.
(It was warm, even in the chill: a sticky and smothering, yet comforting brown liquid, earthen, wise colors; a kind of obsession),

Growing up.

Pool visits, (they were fun), doctors' visits (they were not: shots and checkups, eyesight and hearing growing aged, surgeries, chemotherapy, bad and good news), family visits (cousins, great aunts, great uncles, distances and catching up), Pet store visits (little darlings, playing out in the sun, fondled and held close to my left breast, hamster cages, the abstract squirrels running up the trees, Animal Planet), and sleepover visits (making dinner childishly, watching television, baking cookies, writing "Thank you," notes, being grandmother and granddaughter);

These things were all you and me."

So said the Grieving Child to her deceased grandmother,
(Died, broken and lying comatose, without sound)
Held dear in her Young Mind.

These components of the Child swam in a sea
Of sticky blood and other liquids,
(The knife growing heavy in her hand as she pondered what she had done)
Became muddled, barely behind the field of her vision;

And while she was still, still crying still, still tears
For the one she loved most-- confused--
The Child wrote a poem.

And this was it.

Now the midnight melody unfolds in the background:
A quiet Southern-Asian flute
(It is called an ocarina; it makes heavenly sounds,
But only if you know how to play)

As the Girl takes the knife
(Seeing the reflection in her eyes)
And tells her Young Mind that it was all a delusion:

"Everyone is indeed dying,
Because we are all mad mockingbirds,

And this lunacy knows no bounds;

We are no longer the victims;
This has gone to far,
So quit your sniveling and arise to your fate.

Or everyone
(Including ourselves)
Will surely expire indeed.
(We will all fall from this earth,
In some form of the waking world;
Not only in poetry.)

So said her Young Consciousness to her Young Mind;
Young Mind-- how will it react?