Missing

Photo, Kevin Swanwick

You will admit it (at some point),
though you expect ashes as remainder,
instructions left, someone else deciding
to spread you over a place sticky
with meaning—that you still cringe
at the thought of immolation,
this soul business hard to shake
from the fleshy nature of feeling.

And it’s not the idea of lights-out
trapped in a timeless thought,
stasis at the cold end of the zeroth law,
or the end of grappling with a nothing
that has no point of view.
It is the Blank left in place of
your earthly Love, unable to feel
what you’d miss in the embers
of its absence.



Kevin Swanwick, September 2025