05/19:
 
A tornado flung a fridge into the bones of a tree.
 
Its bark, gnarled, like the mouth of someone, new to grief.
 
 
05/22:
 
I found your pen at the edge of the dresser.
Yet to collect dust, it held your fading 
fingermarks.
 
 
06/18:
 
Then, hunger as a thing to be unafraid of.
 
How the terrapin emerged from a wallow,
found two lions erasing blood from the jaw. 
 
Alone, it tried to get them to leave.
 
 
06/30:
 
I wore my death wish in secret
like a talisman. A fifth ocean to drown in.
 
 
07/07:
 
The panda was no longer endangered.
 
 
08/10: 
 
The smaller zipped pouch, within the larger zipped compartment,
of your toiletry kit—as if its innermost secret. 
Here, I found a condom. Unopened, sealed in plastic. 
Expired a year and 3 months before you passed.
  
 
09/27:
 
The moon came without menses.
 
Finally spoke: Go to sleep.
 
 
10/06:
 
I grew closer
to being older than you’ll ever be.
 
 
11/19:
 
While civilians reached Space, I reached
for the silhouette of a stranger. 
My body, flailed, like a fish stunned with air, 
underneath his weight.
 
 
12/08:
 
I made a word that combined surrender
with vomit—knees, cold with linoleum, bent against 
what your body could not hold—picking up
what X-rays could not.
 
 
01/01:
 
The world spun without you in it.
 
 
02/05:
 
Skin prayed but there was no skin to touch it.
 
 
03/11:
 
Like an invasion on a thousand hooves, the monsoon
paraded town. The house you’d built, quivered.
 
 
04/10:
 
A boy dipped out of a coma and stared at his own name
like it was combustible.
 
 
05/12:
 
When they came for clothes for the orphans, 
your parka with the broken zipper—
I banished to the shadowed end of my drawer.
 
 
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