we always wanted it to end with a bang.
so when it didn't-
when the world coughed politely into a folded elbow,
when the green paper slips slipped quietly into the fireplace for starter,
when the streets went cold and empty and estranged, grown over, buried--
we felt we had been cheated.
where is the war? we chanted, those of us that still could.
and the world whispered back: over .
and we watched it go, like a used-to-be-friend
we could not swallow our pride to ask forgiveness of.
and it went-
not in a rally of sound, sensation, reverb-
but silence.