They finally died
and though they were strangers to me
they were also grandparents
the ones that didn’t know about me
as if this is a soap opera
and not my orderly life
and because their genes
are stitched into my broad shoulders
and my overbite
everyone expects that it should matter
that blood
is all it takes to make people
interesting
but don’t you want to know what they’re like
no more than that fellow
reading the paper
which is to say
a bit
but now they are gone
sunk into the words people use
for the unreachable
I worried I would feel regret
not having met them
but this now strikes me as absurd
like pouting because there is an ocean
in your way
their death was a gift
the quiet erasing of a choice
I could never make.
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