How you
persist in any
loneliness;
how you remain,
even in this late day
of the century,
anticipatory.
You, the burnished
ritual of our slaking.
Stalwart, domesticated.
A prophecy of the willed,
sustained, exhalation.
And later, found
in an abandoned home
of the war zone,
a bit of rust, a skein
of dust rising from you
like a soul only might,
into the light.