Assumptions

I assume I will die on an unassuming morning
during the ascension of a day as fine as any other.
That my eyeballs will bulge,
mesmerized by the sensation of an infinite end.
Not merely the prospect of ending
that we have years to ponder and prepare for.
No, the actual end.
I assume it will taste bitter, but not completely.
Like someone spiked the cyanide with butterscotch.
I assume there will be some type of mourning afterward,
the grave kind that lingers in fits and starts
in unlit corners of lost acquaintance. That my daughter
will eventually marry, my wife remarry.
That the momentum of being will not slacken
for my lost pulse. That days will remain
twenty-four punctual hours in length.
That I will learn the secrets of the afterlife
but not how to transmit them
back to those who could really use them. I assume
nights will stay dark, seasons will cycle, empires will fall,
lovers will quarrel, sex will sell,
waves will rake beaches
while glaciers sink deeper
into the crannies of mountainous posture. In short,
I assume not much will change.
My erasure in strings of pink rubber
embroidering the margins of our loose-leaf coil.
But I might be wrong.

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