Meet Me On The Death Exchange

by Susan Speranza

Meet Me On The Death Exchange

Meet me on the Death Exchange,
we’ll make a fair trade.
Mine for yours.
The sum of our lives will be weighed
stacking our deeds like stones.
Yours are lightweight,
smooth and perfect.
No jagged edges
or razor-like ridges
that make the hand bleed
or the heart congeal.
You were born with an enviable lightness of being,
a gossamer spirit
radiating light
that eviscerated the darkness
with a simple smile.
You were not one who was washed ashore,
shipwrecked and alone,
surviving, not living
in an unwelcoming world
with thoughts so heavy
as to pull you under
drowning you.
The shape of our absence will be measured as well.
Yours is a chasm,
wide and deep.
A thousand cries of grief
echo up from the void,
the laments of all who loved you,
a dirge for the lost fullness of your days.
It is not an infinitesimal pinprick
in the tapestry of existence,
an unnoticed song of empty days
and emptier nights,
an insignificant story that vanishes unseen
as if it never was.
So meet me on the Death Exchange,
we’ll make a fair trade.
Mine for yours.

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Susan Speranza is the author of the award-winning novel, Ice Out, The Tale of Lucia Grandi, the Early Years, and the prose poem, The City of Light. She has had poems published in The Magnolia Review, Poetry Quarterly, The Voices Project, The Feminist Voice. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University. When she is not writing, she is breeding and exhibiting her champion Pekingese and together they make their home in the mountains of Vermont.