POEM: The Last Green Thing
The Last Green Thing
I remember when darkness had its light edges,
when night was a word the window let in,
and someone warm stood between me and the chill
waiting tenderly, patient and entitled.
I remember when the world hadn’t yet learned
to press its full weight through a single hour,
and curiosity ran green and unashamed
through the too ordinary, and unremarkable days,
before the body began noticing its own dying,
before the seasons charged a toll for their joy,
before the flowers lost the thing they were
when I still believed in what they showed.
Do you remember just existing —
I was a stone existing, or the air,
without the cost of it,
without a history following each breath.
Even the bad years wore their damage lightly, then.
Even grief was something I could set aside.
I used to want to slip out of my skin
like a woman slipping from the party early,
quietly, without a scene,
and become someone else entirely —
someone lighter, better, rebegun.
I tried, and was good at it.
I turned myself to sunshine, seasons light,
I gave my brightest pieces to whoever might need them,
and called it love, and sometimes it really was.
Now reinvention costs way too much.
The compassion I keep clean is way too thin
at the places I kept folding it.
The flowers are still flowers.
The seasons still arrive, still bring their joys.
But they are doing it without me now,
maybe I stand watching from behind glass,
raising no fist against the cold of it.
Hurry, ending.
I have set the table.
I have laid out everything I mean to keep —
the color of the light in certain rooms,
the soft fading green light of being young and not yet aware,
how a future used to feel like something good coming,
its promise so large.
I am burning it all now, no fighting it,
the old woman burning her letters —
not angry,
not grieving exactly,
just to be done with the futility.
Come and take what's left.
I am now awaiting you.
I have been practicing this
my whole life.
Marni Fraser
0525.2026 | 8:43pm
Self Portrait | 2026
