Condensed Road Map

standing upon edges marked so clear, like favored lakes upon ash and snow
distilled waterways marking an exit that compels God to find way to speak
She/He/They tell me to exist, to not want death to take me from this world
like the memory of a squirrel that was found in a cinder block that I had to move
I could not stand the movement to be associated in an innocent’s death, I believed
it was a neighbor’s threat, I reported it, and I was essentially laughed at
I only carry partial memories of that time, it is not as though I am depending
on memory as evidence to leave the earth now, it is the daily trial, existence
that proves the wind grain blown against my cursed cheek deserves to go
I have many road maps in my mind that lead to a blessed destination
only one leads to the misery of staying put and that is adequate health
adequate health is not adequate enough to make this worth it, I am too old
and too worn by years of trial to fight for this world, at best, I am an observer,
an observer with a road map in my back pocket with a ready made exit plan,
but God returns over and over and over, finding ways to tell me to exist
I’ve lost count of the number of years it has been like this and to those extremes
Just the hammer of eternity sounding on for me to make a noise that bellows frail
Costing a quarter of a million of alarming citizens the ramifications of my downing