Fifty Two

By week's end I will meet the crying lot, their teeth smeared with ostentatious song. And as I breathe in deep as much as can be bought, all the while I'll sense a rotting in my lungs. They'll tell me, "Tread light on that which will be lost," and to "Pussyfoot around the fibs that bond you." But forty years later bearing wands, they'll tell me, "Wands, they ain't so easily forgot."