The Full and Unabridged Tale

( a  Sestina )
 
 
I wonder if he’ll manage when I’m gone,
Statistics say that I don’t stand a chance.
I’ve never seen this happen in my life,
It’s difficult to say, no one can tell.
They started social distancing apart,
But I was used to it a year indoors.
 
I have no cabin fever while indoors,
I felt that way last year but now it’s gone,
My body’s gotten used to ‘far apart’.
It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love a chance
To cuddle up with him and let him tell
The full and unabridged tale of his life.
 
Yet these days do we really have a life.
Suspended animation kept indoors
Of nothing future generations tell.
Not after lovers such as we are gone
Except when giving poetry a chance,
In lockdown, living many miles apart.
 
To meet and fall in love being apart
A day or so can change the other’s life,
It was exciting then to take a chance.
Seduction in the rain was met indoors,
Pedestrians had rushed away & gone
To tiny coffee shops to kiss and tell.
 
I didn’t have the nerve enough to tell,
To have us figured out and drift apart.
How do pandemics last, how many gone
Of precious souls & those clinging to life.
I underwent epiphanies indoors,
I test my faith till nothing’s left to chance.
 
If we endure will he and I by chance
One day together breech a show & tell,
Play truth or dare outside & not indoors
And never spend another day apart.
Will time unending bring us back to life
Before the mem’ory of us is gone?
 
A stitch around the world may come apart,
But two hearts made as one is now a life
For even when humanity is gone.