Contributor: John Ogden

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I feel like one of those birds,
one of those birds
that is so connected to his mate
that he will die
if she dies.

I think about how much I love her,
how much it would destroy me to lose her
how little it would destroy me to lose anyone else
and I wonder:

Is this normal?
Is the fear of my heart's mortality
the dread of her eventual death
even decades from now
a cold hole mirrored in every heart?

Shakespeare wrote about days like this, in his sonnets.
Shakespeare puzzled through these feelings.
Why does the heart love so fully
when the only thing that lasts forever
is the dust from which we have come?


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John Ogden was conceived of a government form and a passing mailbox. He lives somewhere out in the woods of a rural land more akin to the fantasy realms of literature than real life, and his favorite dirt bikes will always be the broken ones.