kiss the night sky

Like a prayer whistling through my teeth

crushed between my knees

and the carpet floor,

as sterile as a hospital room,

feeble and desperate as its

sole inhabitant.

It is a lesson I’ll never learn,

the toll it takes to love,

each sleepless night and phone call

an unspoken word in the eulogy

as it writes itself behind our ears

Off-beat palpitations of one-two-and;

My old dog Maggie

was just as young as I was, once

We gave her steak and let her

ruin one of my childhood blankets

when the smell of death fell over her,

because we loved her.

And how to forgive yourself

for that, every little way

in which you slowly kill your parents,

Another round, stay awake with me

It started in his bad knee, the one

you always sat on, you know.

My God, the world eats us alive

like mosquitoes, leaving parasites

dormant under our skin

like the very last time

you’ll ever speak to the one you love

long before the crash.

It’s real this time,

the living specter in my room

hung on the wall with its numbered face

I always knew it would hurt,

but they never told me it kills,

staring at the face of the funeral

while a man I’ve never met

read your eulogy

All the side eyes at my dry ones

But your ghost is laughing with me

from behind the lens, I know

You used to pull out a camera

to get me to stop crying

and it worked each time, so

Why should this one be any different?

It was a constant for so long,

those witty comments and

outdated references,

The sheer, unabashed strangeness

in everything you said

I was a fool to think it would stay forever.

It still feels like a bad dream, sometimes

Walking through that empty hall,

the quiet humorlessness as

family gatherings get smaller each year

The pictures haven’t changed, but

I still search from different angles

as if you can see me from the frames

like the last remaining

windows between us.

You can tell me I look silly

and your shirt is far too big on me,

but I fill your shoes quite well, I think

Poking fun at the unthinkable,