memento mori

Yes, we detonate. There is no greater gift.

No more of a reason

to mar the roguish image of indifference; 

to use so what with dignity above disgust. So what, the wine spilt. 

So what, it spilt before lipstick even burned a kiss into the glass. It’s there;

a shriek in time, a cardinal streak, our haphazard human artefact. 

Some alien accident wields us alive only 

to cage us in time: so what if we know of thirteen steps and 

are thrilled falling through the fourteenth, if just to perplex reality.

So what if the world is decked out in ruined carpets, if we risk everything, 

if we choose to stain our existence in stark passion 

the way we wake? Mortality invented reverence—a statue only a statue, 

because death is a statute. Auspice the reward. 

Disturbance only the plot, 

chaos only the story. Purpose in the title.

© Mollie Mardel