Some Are Not Meant For This World

(Dedicated to all those who have died alone.) They cannot fit, they cannot go along, and the reasons are wide: pride, fear, even love never tempered by time, illness of the heart or mind, or simply bad, bad luck: life throws them away until they throw life away.... She was one of the gentle ones, the unlucky ones-- a flower child who missed her time, an era she might have thrived in, free, alive, unencumbered by family ties.... If she had come age in the 60's, she might have lived into her 90's. But lost and afraid in a cold world not of her making, with her bird- like heart breaking, she ate her last hoarded apple, then lay down to sleep and sleep and sleep until she awakened safe in heaven's lap. --judged NA in 'Will to survive' contest, 10/15/20-- [The poem was based on a true incident whereby a young woman suffering severe depression and paranoia was released from a psych ward without anyone informing her family; she stayed alone for weeks in an empty, unheated house in winter subsisting only on half-rotten apples she had picked up from the ground in the back yard.]