Utterance

Have you ever stood on a highway in pitch-black and heard nothing but singing?

The First Year

The year after death is ten years (maybe twenty,

maybe the rest of the ones you have left) and

full of stretching, where things pull so hard your bones

break, because they were never

bones, were always solitude.

a flimsy thing, just calcium and collagen

colliding to pretend something solid.

Late Spring

Does spring start grieving

in April or May? Once each

spring, the candle appears

in the window of a house behind mine.

The curtain opens.

The flame paces, flicker to ember.

One day I look up,

the candle is gone, curtain drawn,

and I go back to dying.