The Opiate, Fall Vol. 19
Lives Not Lived Victor Marrero 1 Day after day, as if haunted by a loss, I relive my lives not lived. Like an amputee reaching out with limbs sensed but never there, I clutch lost worlds that passed me by, worlds that orbited suns without me. I greet as old friends the native selves I never knew who were not allowed to be mine, who were taken away or else were not meant for me to meet on my terms. Denials varnish truth where dark boot-prints leave voids in the sky, like black holes in the Milky Way stamping out lights that can no longer glow or escape. What the first constellation left out by negation extinguished whole generations of stars that never counted, never shined. 2 The boisterous guessing game falls on deaf ears. At the edge, teetering on pins and needles, I seek the right answer. I want reason to win, and win it square. But the tarots’ chatter tells another tale. Reveling in obscure divination, mystics hide what I need to know. I should steal away as I see a lie unfold. Too late to turn back. This far down the line the fallback fails. My brinkman’s forceful charge takes hold to halt the dull rotation that passes for obligation to play for scant return. In the end, like a top’s inertial fate to spin and bore in place, the ballast wheel stops, dead in its tracks. As in the child’s game of ring-around-the-rosy, when ashes sound, we all fall down.
72.
