On the morning of your departure
I walk with you to the bus station.
All that remains is the vicious, irrevocable
CLIP! — and a belch of carbon monoxide.

Your epitaph is a timetable,
out of date and ripped at the corner.
Like remorse, it tells me where
we might have gone in 1993.

Today, the clock has a lot of killing to do.
It carries its seconds in a bandolier,
slung across an ebullient shoulder.
Funny you never said goodbye.

Above the bench we shared, a skewered heart
and 'Grant loves Tiddles forever'
compete with Kilroy's excoriations.
There is always a place for last words.