Just Before

It sounds like playing the same song over and over, thinking about the weeks leading up to losing you: death occurs after the limbo, but before we can hear your voice again.

I am still falling into the fleshy womb of fear, its warmth separating me from time, and you are not here.

It sounds like leaves crushing into dust, thinking about the minutes leading up to losing you: a strange place, fading before we can find you again.

On neurodivergence

She said, "you can only hold
one thought in your head at a time,"
like a small bird
that falls out of a nest--
fragile, its breaths urgent.

But as she is stating this "fact,"
I do not think that she is correct,
as each of my thoughts
darts
fully formed,
flashes of hummingbirds each time,

and each time, that sharp
little flutter
frightens me
when I mistake it for something else,

then it transforms
and finds a friend to fly with it,
each bird defying what makes sense--

just like each thought begets another--
related, but not always--to tag along.

Pompeii

before the river of fire 

swept across the lands, 

flames fell from the sky, 

and we took 

to each other's arms 

for shelter.

in confusion, we wept,

our hot tears leaving 

deep valleys 

in sloughs of skin.

this is a lesson we cannot tell you.

it has to be shown.

we exist to care for one another. 

it is written in our bones, held 

in our graves as testimony:

large skull, small skull, no flesh--

a mother's long limbs, fingers, 

hold close her child, whose tiny frame

is forever five years old--

whose mother so loved him 

that her last remaining instinct

was to protect him

from elements beyond her control.

it is futile; it is terrible.

it has to be shown.

The American Trauma

It's the same reason
the attic isn't decorated,
or why guided tours
of sausage factories
do not exist.
We hide truths.
We store them
not just in metaphors,
in figures of speech,
but in muscle fibers,
in blood,
until the resentment
isn't just some burden
but a punishment
in waiting,
curlers wound
a little too tightly
to the scalp,
invoices folded
into little sharp thirds
before they go off in the mail.
This is how the truth is inherited,
one small bundle
passed down
then passed again
until bones
are wittled into nothing
and daughters are left
missing their fathers.

a place that I can't get to

In a room, all I feel
is the cold that you left.
Through the air, all I see
is your face full of blame.
What's left to see?
What's there to see?
...A place that I can't get to.

Red House Painters, "Song for a Blue Guitar"

Who am I but
an impermanent object
shrinking
into something
I don't recognize,
dreaming of a place that
I can't get to,
where every grain of an idea,
every morsel of
a tedious ritual
seems like a waste of time
because you aren't there?