If Things Happen As They Should

If things happen as they should, 

There will be a world in which 

You don’t exist. 

A world in which I continue to, 

That hums with all its myriad beauty,

Horror, and wonder, and 

You will no longer be there. 

I think such a thought

Is so heavy,

I can barely begin 

To conceive of it. 

It is a fact so cold and dormant, 

So foreboding, that it too hums 

With a perverse kind of being;

An inevitability winking 

From an unknown place 

I will definitely know—

If I am lucky. 

And the idea that one more meal, 

One more visit, trip, evening, 

Even one more ordeal 

Will never be enough 

To be able to say 

I am okay with the fact 

That there can be no more of them

Is devastating.  

And any insistence  

That this is a testament  

To the wonderfulness  

Of the connection 

Doesn’t offer any consolation here;

Now. 

It may though, later, 

In that world in which you don’t exist,

Where things have happened as they should.