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December 30th.

After the Christmas suicides
there are two types of people on the street:
Those with love, and those without.
The ones with love are often found in pairs,
giddy with their existance,
insane in their beauty,
too radiant to resent.
Those who are not found in pairs sometimes have a look of confusion
on their faces;
as if they are almost noticing something
to which they should be blind.

Those without love are scarred as clearly
as if they had been in a fight.
They walk like combat veterans,
like survivors of some war that went
undeclared by the government and unnoticed by its citizens.
It's not that they don't smile.
Sometimes they even smile with both halves of their mouth.

In a few office buildings,
the Christmas decorations
have not yet been taken down.
I wonder if the building caretakers are the latest Christmas suicides.

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