your back leaning over a glass display
where traces of bodily fluids
from a real autopsy splatter. I look, but cannot
touch. We meet again like careful delegates
This fear of death, it must be green. I see it
often, wrapped around her finger, a laurel film,
translucent, kind of pretty, darkened in dishwater
on days she can’t be brave.
The fly on my windowsill
crawls towards a hot sunbeam
between the dried raindrops
In public libraries,
she took to draping
strands of hair
across her spines
only to come back
years later to find
the grey intact.
How would we know they were happy?
we might ask.
A tan.
A row of cedars speak in tongues,
“Ah, what’s for dinner?
I am coming out of mourning”