Become Full Stop Poem by Christopher Withers

the dead lie dreamless in their cribs,
life leached out but never missed -
apart from those whose memory serves
realities memes, and sounds and words.

each death subtracts from friends and kin,
a part of ego now caves in,
so loss of love and self's support,
feeds the shadow: always worn.

Is grief on death about those lost
whose place in time has become full stop?
or is it guilt, shadow fed,
of all we meant yet left unsaid?