Things Everyone

Gets one of and can only lose
Once, like youth, virginity, life,

Are all slightly fantastical,
Imaginary, as you need

To name them, identify them,
To believe you have them and then

Believe once they exist they won’t.
Virgin youths never know they’re young

And virginal, unless someone
Repeatedly has told them so,

And as for life, are you really,
And if you lost it, would you know?

And yet everyone finds themselves
Defined by such things or the loss

Of them forever—after all,
Definitions don’t need consent

To hold, which is how dead are dead,
Which only undead words would know.