I gave a boy a pirate toy;
he cut me with a sword.
I taught a little girl to whirl,
until she got too bored.
An old man walks on darker streets.
Increasingly, they narrow.
He wraps his bones in memory’s sheets
and listens to the marrow.
The children play, and hide all day,
behind the gravestones bending.
I wave goodbye. I’m off to die.
There is no happy ending.

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