Each had been terrible
enough to himself
already, to that truest
self, inside, as only he
could know it, so it
seemed it should
matter less what ways
in particular they’d been
terrible to each other,
or even that they’d been
terrible at all. Likewise,
whether death mattered
or not wasn’t the point,
had never been, they
understood this, now:
bird crossing sky; sky
getting crossed; the sky
after that … They believed,
about suffering,
that its special power
is to define, even as it
displaces it, everything
it touches. They held on
to each other.