notes on grief (tw: death)

at daybreak, a ream is brought into the cosmos

and a wolf’s nightly cries spread gauze on a saltwater

wound. a fistfight breaks out and three blind men cauterize

a comrade’s woes, slip a palette knife over trauma.

the way my mother slices tomatoes, is slick meat

on scabbed knees. when i arrive as a leaping

lilly’s cut stem- a reaper will whirl a hurricane in his nail beds,

a child underneath his squatting limbs.

once a dead man’s casket is grown into mildew by

a raging snowdrift. half-eaten, half-baked;

an apple pie- a tinge of a widow’s liver. here cacao

strains milk-sap into a babe’s tongue, laps it up like

my grandmother’s daschund. yesterday we put

him down; today his water bowl drips sonorous.

then, a drooping elm-oak fell to the ground. a little

angel-boy clipped his wings and hung them to dry.

in kindergarten, we peg crafts and arts. after naptime;

go outside and plant a sapling, suck dried succulents

into our teeth.

girl;

uproots a banyan tree and looks

towards the sky. an eagle in her clenches, grips a

hamster in cleaved feathers and lets out a wail.