The weak survive!
 A man with a damaged arm,
 a house missing a single brick, one step
 torn away from the other steps
 the way I was once torn away
 from you; this hurts us, it

 isn't what we'd imagined, what
 we'd hoped for when we were young
 and still hoping for, still imagining things,
 but we manage, we survive.  Sure,
 losing is hard work, one limb severed
 at a time makes it that much harder

 to get around the city, another word
 dropped from our vocabularies
 and the remaining words are that much heavier
 on our tongues, that much further
 from ourselves, and yet people
 go on talking, speech survives.

 It isn't easy giving up limbs,
 trying to manage with that much
 less to eat each week, that much more
 money we know we'll never make,
 things we not only can't buy, but
 can't afford to look at in the stores;

 this hurts us, and yet we manage, we survive
 so that losing itself becomes a kind
 of song, our song, our only witness
 to the way we die, one day at a time;
 a leg severed, a word buried: this
 is how we recognize ourselves, and why.