Hemingway Was Wrong — Man Dies Thrice.

A Poem.

Photo by Tomasz Kluz on Unsplash

I wrote this poem about a year ago, after an annual review with an elderly patient. They — of course — were still alive; yet something about them felt different. Both physically, and mentally. It reminded me of the phrase by Ernest Hemingway, of every man having two lives, and I realised that perhaps — they didn’t. Perhaps there was a form of death wrapped up within life. And thus, the poem below was born.

Hemingway Was Wrong — Man Dies Thrice.

Hemingway once wrote

“Every man has two lives; when he is buried in the ground,
and the last time someone says his name.”

Yet I would suggest,
that man die thrice.

You see
there is a point
in a person’s life
— or more aptly, in their death —
when they stop feeling like love.

Tender touches become sharp,
with jagged bends.
Sinew replaces life;
displacing comfortable embraces.

Nothing furled can unfurl again,
nothing unbent can be bent.