Already you’re walking down the road alone,

though you insist you can still turn back.
You’d rather not hear our grief-song,

so we offer silence, the one gift still possible. 
Your body was the oldest home you ever knew.

Stalwart and reliable, it bore you across continents. 
Now flesh proves traitorous, dead skin

sloughing like bark from a rotting tree—
though at the core, the wood still lives.

Don’t tell us what you see ahead.
Speak your way back to the beginning,

when it was still morning, and light undulated 
off springtime fields like a promise.

You didn’t know then what roads you would travel. 
You were young, and eager, and ready for life.

There was still so much time.