This is the Reason

I’ve never written you

a love letter, as I did for the girls

I crushed on in school,

vowing a childish forever love.

I’ve been told that both 

can never be truly promised,

there are too many variables

upon which they can falter—

an unexpected loss

of mind and memory,

the foreboding phantom

of infidelity,

that our lifespans

are simply too long,

the decay of what we were

befalling while we breathe,

that the warbler outside my

window, his years but a

jaunt through junior high,

says it better,

his skyward pledge

to his treetop mate

daily putting me to shame.

Andreas Gripp

Andreas Gripp