Dreams/Children

But how could I forget the ambition of my youth?
The glory of an ivy-clad blood-brick profession?
The romance of a life that doesn't exist, that has never existed, not for anyone?
(See, a horizon was never something you can approach and straddle)
Let these dreams die hard as a triple-armored warrior

For how could I forget the children of my mind?
They have danced and sung and I have watched them grow,
in the terrifying pallor of the doomed young.
My kids and I never spoke the word among ourselves, never once;
I glanced askance of truth and simpered little false sentiments to them instead:
"I love; I will make you grow; you will make me alive."

I laid in love with the love and art and beauty and industry of this age,
and these offspring were born for a sickeningly insignificant death

not even punctuated
not capitalized
not articulated

Like an afternoon comment from a teenage girl to a friend's wall:)
Lol.

Surely someone could pull out a hankerchief and set up an exclamation point as a memorial pillar--
but no, the children of mine simply whimpered and fell silent,
and I never explained to them why it had to be.

One year I was to be someone, to have someone,
to make something with my hands that dazzled,
mature, supple grown versions of my children-dreams.
The next year I doubted; they were pale even in sunlight.
The next year they began to cough, and there was blood.
Then they were gone.

My heart, in shock, is beginning to understand--
I will sit behind this desk for forty years, married to an accountant from the south.
This, I know,

this is how one forgets the ambition of one's youth.