Day 3: Elegie

here's to the death of a salesman
the end of innocence, the creaking closet doors
the short circuited sins and skeletons
that made me the muttering father
his infidelities
and his disappointed son

here's to the death of
the baby's red fist wrapped tightly around the unsuspecting
index finger of an adult hardened by the world
baffled by love, indiscriminate love
the kind we are trained to forget
the kind we unlearn

here's to the depth of
feeling those words, those rhythms, those songs once evinced
and the dull currents of muscle memory that have replaced them
my lips remember and my heart is stoned
in by what is rote

the world whittled willy loman down
into the toothpick we all become

the difference between being and becoming
the conduit
we call age

his haunting escape, we call redemption

here's to the death of my salesman