I myself should never have been born

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

My grandmother asked, “Does it feel like being widowed?”

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt

There is so little left of the tomato plants.

Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.

He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome

I have observed, the theorist
I am

I am still waiting for the lion