When All Was Said and Done

“you never know what you’ll get out of life,”

someone once told her when she was young,

and she grew into the words, each one shaping

and carving her out of the wood encasing her,

until the day she realized she too was flawed.

“I’ll never love anyone like I love you now,”

her husband said to her on their third year

of knowing each other fully, completely,

but she didn’t believe the words, not then

and they too turned out to be pretty lies.

“you never really cared about me, did you?”

her daughter told her on the day she left,

gone to LA for all her dreams to come true,

and she tried not to cry, thinking back

to a time when the girl was so carefree.

“there may be only a few months left,”

the doctor said after the biopsy, and

she felt her world quake around her—

but she closed her eyes and breathed,

wondering what a life really was after all.

“I didn’t learn a damn thing,” she said

right before she took her last breath,

but the words might have been more lies

because she was too afraid to say

she never wanted to leave in the first place.