ANALYTICAL
Perhaps, face to face with defeat,
where good is another’s to keep,
resignation drafts my receipt,
I’m tallying debts that I reap.
And adding the sum of the loss,
I ask with the weight of the cost:
Why vision I dreamed has been crossed,
and given to someone I’m not?
***
Perhaps, back to back with the chance,
so hollow, so fragile, so vain,
I turn to the past in a trance,
subtracting remembered remains.
Each fondness that ended in naught,
a zero, so empty, so slight—
so little in time to be sought,
so quickly dissolved out of sight.
***
Perhaps, side to side with desire,
I’m left with the echoes of lies.
I wander the ruins entire,
multiplying what never arrives.
For factors of loss are my flaws,
dividing through errors I made.
Regret does not alter the laws,
nor rescue the sums I have paid.
***
Perhaps, step by step with belief,
so illogical, reckless, and blind,
I shrink from the numbers in grief—
what quotient brings profit to mind?
The product, when totaled, is flawed,
irrational, broken, untrue.
Another miscalculated plot,
another misstep to construe.
***
And voice upon voice of the blame,
that tarnishes all of my own,
has counted, has measured the shame:
the verdict was long overthrown.
Author: Veron
