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.
*
