The Arrangement Failed

I used to think there was a point to this,
some edge where all the waiting gathered sense,
where what was lost would open into light
and show itself as something meant.

It was a good arrangement.
Suffering had weight, but also use.
Nothing was wasted. Even grief
was part of how things worked.

That has gone.

The world continues in the usual way.
Morning arrives without announcement.
The sky does what it does
whether anyone is watching or not.

No veil lifts.
Nothing waits behind it.

Time moves on, not toward anything,
but simply on.
Days pass.
They do not add up.

What I called hope
was mostly habit.
A way of standing things
I could not change.

It helped, for a while.

Now there is less to say.
No one is coming.
Nothing is being prepared.

The body ages.
It fails in ordinary ways.
The mind adjusts as it can.

Even love, which once seemed
a sign of something larger,
turns out to be its own limit.
It holds, then it doesn’t.

There is no great correction waiting.
No final clearing of accounts.
No moment when it all explains itself.

Only this:

the room,
the light on the wall,
the sound of something passing in the street,
and the sense, not sharp but constant,
that this is all there is.

It is not dramatic.
It does not ask for witness.

It simply remains.