When I have breathed my last upon this Earth

When I have breathed my last upon this Earth When the soul flies free from it’s mortal shell When I no longer suffer the hates and sorrows, joys and laughter Of this world, In the last moment of my life, What did you really mean to me, and I to you? Yes, we have talked, and we have walked We guessed and laughed and prodded playfully around each other, Never really digging into our souls Afraid of being cut down So we weren’t as close as we could have been For fear of not being loved, we build a wall around Whether humor, shyness, over-zealous anger, brazen sexuality, Whatever serves the purpose, we hide And I wonder, sometimes. What lies beneath? If we were each to throw away the constraints of our miserably constrained existences To come clean with each other, to purge out all the evils, all the goods, To stand naked before each others souls What would we find then? And I try. God knows I try. I try to tell you all that I mean, to express my anguished repressed emotions All screaming within me to hit, to kick, to cry, to kiss, all screaming And so often I go by with a dead look on my face And the screaming is unheeded from my soul I might smile as I pass you, and say hello As my heart bleeds crimson tears within me Wanting to jump out of my chest and bond with you Because I don’t know any better Because we can’t stand before each other’s souls naked. And when I die, what were you to me? A vaguely formed fantasy. A haunting image, shamed memories of rejection, Wistful memories of happiness not quite grasped Brooding on whether I’m even capable of love If a person is capable of loving me And we walk around the subjects we need to talk about. We don’t let them out. For Christ’s sake, couldn’t you let them out? Hear me out? And would that even work? And what do you think at my funeral crying Would my last thoughts have been of you while dying? Mark Burton March 25, 2001 12:23A.M.