back, and back again,
through uncertain time
i am pulled, and pulled
apart. the things that drew me
then, i could not know
how they would stay
how they would stain me
with a thickening scum,
the collapsing froth of a fragile life
that's always sinking, sinking.
and such sweet time taken dumbly down
the living, our idiocy-
it's what lays waste to me now 
what finds me, reminds me always 
wants more for you that what I knew
the way the blood on one friend's neck ran
down her throat and how
it was that one drop undid me
although it came after too long lending
ourselves into the hands of others
and i can't forget, of course,
the way you are taught you can forget,
or think you have, in fact,
when all it is is running,
the blood running, and you running,
both or even all three or four of us, all of us, running
far into a stupid future
where we thought no hand would clamp your thigh
where no shorn skin would sting
where a hand might at last tremble
with mercy, where someone asks at last
or wants to ask
because right there, where you didn't ask,
where you didn't try to find this out
this thing you didn't know, this thing
you didn't know, you never found it
now this thing I bore that cannot be killed.