If there was ever tenderness
I have forgotten it.

I do recall
how honest you were,

telling me not to go
the route you went,

and here I am now,
somewhere else entirely.

If there is a rationale
for your advice,

I have become its
embodiment. I indeed

ruined everything. Indeed
I am myself a ruin:

a mystery, an unexcavated
burial chamber waiting

to be bulldozed and regretted.
Hear them revving their engines

now. You are still here and will
be here after they pass — no one

guessed that would happen.
When they finish the road

over where I was, you will
take it to wherever it goes.

I’ll be in the blacktopped
earth, still underfoot.

I did not go the route you took.
I instead became that route

and look where it got me: if ever I had
tenderness to offer,

it remained unoffered. It remains so
today. Here in the sealed earth it all ends —

for the best perhaps, considering
what I was, what I might have been.