What We Choose Is What We Get

Preference matters little, service counts.
We're given a gold ring before birth
and quickly lose it. This marriage is broken
before we know the pain. Divorce,
not annulment. Weakness laments the cure.

Even so, the world shines. Exuberant flowers
and rotting bark alike proclaim rapture:
life, death, life—deeply inhaled, exhaled.

I live within the ring, knowing what I lost,
sensing it just now within my touch.