your birthday falls

between the Ides of February and

pruning day for roses

when the master gardener

makes them sound so alive, so fragile, so human

the way you once were

Boy without words for the monsters

we all become without the Antidote 

without the blood transfusion 

without the interventionist God

Who somehow, ineluctably abides

this fallen terrible

world where children, babies even

grow up thinking both antichrist and apocalypse are normal

Whole time grown ups

Just shout the most destructive platitudes

into the shotgun corridor of

This unbearable

desolation.