maybe that’s the hardest part

is it worth
the time to be
everything to everyone
but me?

i never saw myself
as anything more than
some writer you learned of
long after i ‘d expired.

maybe that’s the hardest part
of knowing/not whether you’
ll see these words some day far
or they’ll be recounted at gravesite
and forgotten soon after, like
a tombstone’s sentence and time’s
embrace, a dissipation of
all that once existed, seen
, but memory is only so that
even it gives in when loosened
hold, holding fast, slows.