And in the End
Lovers on the beach that night,
whisper-giggling, holding hands,
ignored you, just a drunken shadow
propped against the seawall.
They only wanted interruption-free
cuddles, cunnilingus, coitus
on a blanket before the air cooled.
This is not unknown in youth.
It wouldn’t have mattered:
You were already poisoned, dead
or close enough to be too late
for some stranger’s ministrations.
You couldn’t name yourself, couldn’t
tell how you came to not be, or why
you came to the seashore to find out.
This is a result of dying unseen.
Seventy-four years are buried, and still
nobody has identified you, nobody
has explained or excused your corpse.
And no one has come in frantic tears
to ask were you seen, where you are:
Not a wife, a son, a lover hoping
it was not her husband who sinned.
This is the truest, saddest mystery.
