Marcescence
What if death wasn’t easy. The bathtub, full of liquor.
At some point, the arrows on the weathervanes
all point to another world. We should want to break,
not bend, I’ve read, but the boy broken over ice
in an ice-bath is as lost as the air that trembles
his lashes. Accountability often looks like kids standing
on one side of a locked door. The sound of running
water. The bank drafts my dying brother called
promises. Somehow, I want him to stand ungrateful with me.
The leaves have held on this long. A dream retained
as the body retains a compass. A yield sign
doesn’t stop anything from leaving. The streets,
abandoned again. Tell me how to lose someone
who didn’t know he was lost. He’d already quit cocaine
and food, his eyes swollen to shelters. Why bother
with love? It snowed overnight. The snow’s hush,
revolutionary. Estranged is water, midwinter.
I have no idea what any of this means.
