How I love the narrative of cemetery forays,
the sky glowering with meteors, the earth shattered
with the living, his face up my shirt like a dog
sniffing circles, occasionally stopping to dig,
to ask if it’s blasphemy, fucking on the graves.
Beloved mother, I have no intention
of becoming you, but lights drip sweet green
apples from trees, and my face,
a warm breast. He drives through the wrought-
iron gates like a wolf plows through snow.
I lay supine as the dead, my hair fanned
like a dark yarn across the grass, growing
as their hair grows, my nails move over
him the way their nails still move,
my limbs shimmer and turn as theirs
are said to turn after a shock. Meteors fall
like contractions, one every other minute,
some bright with pain, others dull and barely streaking
the monitor of the sky. It is cliché to wonder
about their lives, whether she owned a little black
clutch and he a pocket watch, whether their children
brought the fireworks of chrysanthemums that pop
from the stones. Better to concern
myself with Earth and its desires,
with the liquid his body makes,
where it goes after he goes.
Photo By: Henry Lee
