To Bear the Ruse

Because I once chose death, I expend my days in
horror at the possibility of it
choosing me. There are comforts the living heave
onto the dying
to evince a defiant distance
from inevitability—that they were ready,
or there was reason—but don’t dare

say I went peacefully, willingly. Tell them
exhaustion took
over my will but that in my eyes
you saw no relief. That I pleaded to continue
and panicked in every trying terminal
breath. I have known intolerable pain but
at its end, I was alive, begging to begin again.

Make sure to explain that what I understood of
love was childishly intense and usually
disprovable. That I cried over a comma, confused
every skyline for another, did not believe any verse
could be blank. Don’t leave
out the walnut cracking on the gravel
that I mistook, one last time, for an acorn.

Copyright © 2024 by Cindy Juyoung Ok. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 24, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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