You see, darling, 
The biggest problem was that they
 

Could not seem to agree
On whether they all were the same animal
 

Nor could they agree, therefore,
On whether they all had equal value. Value

They measured, not merely by the fact of breath,

Rendering value obsolete

As a matter of course, but by paper

Dyed into various colors. (They could not agree

On a single color, colors were very
Hard for them, darling.) And that paper 
 

That was dyed and used to measure
Value, passing from hand

To hand, from lover to lover
And so on and so forth,

Came, of all things,

From their trees, when their trees

Created the very air they breathed

Which, though of life, was, to them,

Not of value. And so we know

They had gifts great enough to see

Into and out of their condition: the voices

They sang with, the music and poems

And toward the end, before the fire rain
Came and the oceans lifted and merged into one,
 

Even the structures they lived within

Which healed them as they slept. And though 

The minds of many were truly formidable, truly
Formidable, the hearts of some
 

Alert and alive, they were so detached

From one another, even from those they chose

To birth or raise or walk beside, often existing
Entirely in their bodies, or not at all,
 

They required something they called a self

Which I think, darling, 

Meant they would have believed that

You were not I—

Not ever—

Which, to us, now, would seem silly, wouldn’t it?