I have not thought about death the way you have.
I have a disease that makes me vomit till I die.
Harnessed to the hospital bed, I try to tell my son
why I can’t be touched, why so many wires obstruct
what he has come to know as love.
Still. This, I think, is better than Tennessee.
Better than the Night Deposit gloom
I used to swoon to, better than the boy
who sighed I’m bored as I bared
my body, better than the drill of downtown
Clarksville on nights I put reefer aside to feel
the chill of moonshine. For once, I don’t
want to learn anything. I try to find a crescent
of skin he can cling to, slit the paper smock,
pretend I’m a robot, say that’s why the lights
blink blue. Last week, a pond gathered January
at its lips and we bent over it. The world was
many and we were two. Tonight, you count
the needle-stabbed scabs in my hand but
I can’t hear the numbers just the pond lap
the heady swirl of earth losing itself
in an hourless violet splash.
