Childhood is gone. What remains?
Childhood is gone. And youth.
And ties with people I have loved are broken now.
My grief is more than I can easily contain.
My grief builds this town anew
And raises all the dead to walk with me this day.
What's left?
My future seems nefarious,
Drained of mystery
Known in my bones.
Most of all, what I will miss
Is the extravagance of my entire future
Stretched out before me like a highway in the desert.
Waves of heat rising up, wrinkling the air.
I weep for what is gone.
And I weep for myself.

—Deirdre Burroughs (Running with Scissors, 2006)