After

After you die, my years with you
rattle like the last bits of kibble
in the tin bowl of existence.

I stand guard over them
like a starved and brutal thing,
as the most perfect self,
knowing that they, and we, and I
aren't anything but a subtle reshaping of nothing,
the curvature of light around a great mass,
a momentary allusion to color.

You, on the other hand,
were always something.

Let Me Tell You

"Let me tell you how it feels," she said,
words swarming from her mouth like angry ants,
biting at everything.

"Let me tell you how it feels," she said,
words spooling and re-spooling,
like a printer jammed with paper.

"Let me tell you how it feels," she said,
words sinking into the river of air,
depressed girls with irons in the pockets of their raincoats.

"Let me tell you how it feels," she said,
having given up completely
on feeling anything whatsoever.

Somewhere Else

Somewhere else, a man pays a genocidal militia to shoot his wife
rather than hack her to death with a machete.

This is a small act of humanity,
like holding the door in an elevator
or starting a fresh pot of coffee when you've had the last cup.

Later that man becomes an interpreter,
translating for western journalists the words of the same terrorists.
He searches for the faces of his wife's killers,
but those faces are everywhere.

Alone at night,
that man waits to die,
just as we all do.

From the 5th Floor Window

A sea of birds washes across the reflection
in the glass of a picture frame.
It will catch you off guard and your eyes will tear.
Don't turn around to see
the reality of birds
is unimportant.
This is
the most beautiful thing you will see today.