Fear

If the pain doesn’t come back, 

what will I write about? Will the poems 

have tendon and teeth? I didn’t get 

right the sonnet of all its colors.

I did not find the exact dagger of phrase 

about the long loss of my life.

Hope is all I do and am. 

I don’t think I’m poet enough 

to make you taste this mango; 

or see that sutured sunset unless 

from a hospital bed. 

I was good for carving. 

There will be kisses, music, street names. 

Loved ones will go where the gone do. 

What if I don’t want to (write it: can’t) 

write about these things. 

What if I would rather feel 

than create feeling? 

What then? Go ahead.