• Art and medicine
• arts in health/arts and health
• community arts
• dentist

We would like it to be different

But it can never be different.

We try to talk about it even more,

As if the words were a salve,

but there are not the right words, not

even the wrong words arranged well.

We want to go back, to do it

all again, but with our eyes wide.

We would have listened for noises.

We might have detected the scent of it in the room.

We would like it to begin again

from where it left us off.

But we will not find you there.

We will not locate ourselves there.

We have come to know too much.

The very air has been fouled, the light eclipsed.

Squinting will not clarify any of it, nor bending to it.

We know well we have come too late.

The clock has circled past midnight.

We might have stopped you,

but the door was locked

from the inside, as you had left it.

We might have found you in time but

you were done with time and

the key was in your pocket.

We can only hope to sort fragments,

for that small hope to remedy this despair.

We would like it to be different, but today,

like yesterday, and like the day before that day,

this thing derived is just the same.

If there were reason, we might not have to bear it.

We can only hope to learn to bear it, to bear all of it.

But you took your reasons with you, and

You left us here, wishing for it to be different.

What chance do we have?

Of all things, why did you choose that?