In this one small act
-- miniscule, undetected by almost
everyone --
there is the end of the world

A heartbeat steady and sure, stopped
by an unseen hand
vibrations stilled
the silence echoing through
a suddenly empty skull

I wish that I could hear what some might say should pass
for reasons why.

In this, there is no vast beyond, no other side;
the existence thereof is inconsequential
anyway
when one is there
and one is here

In the night sounds, I sit waiting
to hear the low thud of a string plucked,
reverberating

Nothing

Just the high-pitched sounds of ignorant, lucky things
with wings.

We are reduced in this to nothing more than the first thing that we knew 

I am three years old and watching
my father melt into my mother
the universe closed in around them

I could feel it then, the nothing 
the curtain coming down, closing off the reality
of permanence
the shape of letting go. 

I killed my aloe.

Everyone says you can't do that;
That aloe is impossible to kill.
I can kill damn near anything. 

Pert near, my grandma Fox used to say:
"Supper's pert near ready."

She was the softest person I've ever known
And probably the toughest

I remember the apple tree in her yard. 

I wonder how she walked and talked and breathed when her little ones were gone. 

I want to make apple butter,
sit in the kitchen and watch it cook down to thick, brown
Paste

Feel the autumn forcing its brittle way into the heat.

I want to reconstruct the farmhouse
Stack it plank by plank, haphazard
Crawl back up into its lap, settle deep into the sawdust and woodsmoke and the crumbling edges
Of the floorboards
and the softened stairs, sagging in the center

Find the places where the ghosts are huddled
Whispering to me that the aloe can live
pert near anywhere. 

Find a place
go there
look around
try again.

Cover your ears with thoughts
of escape plans
and tiny spiders crawling
up your arms
Cover your mind with things that used to work but now
only make you real.

Find a place and know
it isn't yours
sit down in the grass
try again.

Cover your eyes with
indifference and giant shades
Cover the holes in your mind with bandages made of memories
And lyrics from the songs you used to sing your kids
to sleep.

Find a place to hide and don't come out
Try again.

It’s not like I thought you didn’t
fit in here, or whatever

Not that you seemed out of place, exactly
Although it’s the universal lament, isn’t it?

“I don’t belong here,” although Thom Yorke
(to his credit) sings like
he invented the idea
It was more like you were the only native and all the rest of us
(by which I mean me) some sort of
invasive creeping shrub you allowed and cultivated
for the flowers
and the scent

And at night I start these thoughts, and travel off along some strange tangential road and midway through
a sentence, you step away
“Hang on a second, there’s a thing…

I’m still listening”

But by then, my thoughts have settled in
Cozy in a den of softly played forgetfulness and by the time you turn
your face around, again
they’re fast asleep
And we go through the motions
of our day.

In the darkest part of the night, restless from your footsteps and your weight
against the mattress, I begin
“But like, that’s not all he was, Thom Yorke”

And you walk with me along the winding path of thought
to sleep,

The resident leading the visitor
the alien following blind.

They flatten themselves against
the walls, as I walk past
trying to make themselves
invisible
holding the breath
they never had
to remain unheard and I
flex my fingers
once, twice
feel the cracks in my knuckles and my
ribs
as I breathe for them.

They are not shrinking back in fear
but in relief
heads bowed, ghosts
in awe of the living
hiding from the light.

It never comes
and still they stand there, waiting
flattened paper sculptures
where the spectres used to hide.

Every crack was a stolen breath
every smile an act of defiance, every
act of rage, every fast, illicit
fuck
a testament to life
where the ghosts were meant to be.

Every smile now
a fair exchange
every slow, deep breath at night
a token like the precious
bits of treasure taken from a child’s
pocket:

A smooth stone, a penny, a tattered wing from a broken moth
their worth unknown except to those
who picked them up

The ghosts are watching from behind their paper eyes and I am
staring back with matches
set to light.

You don’t have to be gentle
with everyone.

You don’t owe it to the boot that stomps your face to smile
through broken teeth.

You don’t have to prove yourself again and again
and again
worthy of the praise of those who aim
to crush your larynx closed; you don’t

have to
stanch your rage to be accepted in
polite society
Manners are for tea time
and waiting in line for the sink.

You don’t have to look away avert your eyes pretend that you don’t see
Just because you can
Just because you get to.

You don’t have to be the one to plug the flowers into
the mouths of the guns while the bullets fly
and the bodies fly
and the flags fly
and the buzzards fly and wait
to pluck your eyes out
as they melt into the ground.

You don’t have to be gentle, but you are
because it’s counter what they’re doing
and so you’re not like them, but understand
You are the teeth
Or you’re the boot
Or you’re the laces
tied up tight.

Look at us, scorched and scornful

black-burnt stick-limbs scratching messages on the walls,

pencil scrawled profanity to make you

stutter and avert your eyes

like you never thought those words

in pleasant company,

gloves stretched tight white painful across your knuckles

buried deep behind your teeth, tasting

blood at the back of your tongue, fighting

hard

not to swallow. Look at

us, small and sinful

brains gone flaccid, atrophied from

lack of use and no desire

to exercise

they tell us

GO OUTSIDE

TAKE A BATH!

positive

fucking

think

like you can’t even

make a spark

to light the way

Look at us, sunken-eyed and dark below

so goddamn depression-beautiful

we’ll let you know if we need anything

thanks so much for reaching out

the platitudes drip dirty water

down our chins

“If only we had known” and in truth

your arrogance

is all that separates us.

I am not

prepared

to look at the place

you left your shoes

(I see them at night, behind

my shuttered eyelids, I picture

them

side by side, one laid over sideways

discarded with the laces

struggling to catch up)

I have a towel, here

I have hot coffee

you can have my robe.

The waves creep in and I know it’s not the ocean

yet

you never made it there, and still

-and still.