they sent the cavalry first / because they always do / because men like to watch beasts break before they lift their own hands / because history only remembers the names of those who stood last / and not the ones who were forced to kneel first

i read somewhere that the last wild horse died in a field that was not its own / that it shuddered at the touch of grass it had never known / that it did not die running but waiting / waiting for the sky to change / waiting for the dust to settle / waiting for something that did not come

there is no poetry in that / only the raw weight of endings / only the bone-rattle of a thing that should have never been caged

i think of all the things that waited and were never met / all the lives that ran and still ended at the same door / i think of the men who sent them first / i think of the men who will not outlive their own echoes / i think of the last horse / ribs rising / breath slowing / waiting

the sun did not stop for it / the world did not pause / and maybe that is the worst part / that there is no mercy in the closing of things / that we are only ever watching something die while something else refuses to notice