Her kisses were moonshine
and bullets, three shots
to the heart, like a rose
on the canvas of morning,
like art, an eyelash on a poem
that always makes me pause,
three xs at the bottom of a page.

It is often forgot, or not
At all thought of, but I
Wonder if you haven’t
Heard the tale of how
Time loves the little?

He took dust and spun,
Violently he did run with
This tiny ball of fun. So
Slow was the sprout, so
Subtle the route but not
One moment did Time
Not sing so happily of.

He sings of you how he
Sang the progression of
Dust to Earth. My friend,
You are so small. Not
Unlike a particle flying
Through the cosmos,
Guided by Time and
Gravity, on the journey
To becoming a planet.

If I look long enough I'll see
mammoth bones with butcher marks,
a broken flint blade between the ribs
- an empty crib, Madonna's face, a swan
on a snake with two heads - instead
of lightly stained pine grains
on the back of a dusty shelf half-
full of myself, old books and odd things
with lost words waiting in the wings.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

When she died, I was jobless,
sleeping on her couch,
and a few months out of the ward.

My mental instability helped me lose friendships, love, and my identity.

I used to hope death would touch me
and I did not know why I wanted it to.

Death instead touched her,
drifting like a gas, underneath her door,
into her lungs, erasing consciousness
like lavender being blown by the wind,
into marked a detergent bottle.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

A blue shock spread throughout me,
like the ocean swallowing animals
and forcing them to adapt.

I began drowning in water that looked like gas station slushee,
my ribcage hugging frantic gelatin organs,
beating alongside the spindle of time.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

My carcass became Sun-kissed from the burning of change --
my grandmother died before I could succeed:
my grandmother died before she could see me live.

I crawl through the coarse, wheat-dyed sand,
hoping the blood I trail can be measured in her love.

I hope to make her proud, to learn to work hard,
then harder and harder and harder.
To become fully healthy,
to become what she stayed by my side for.

One of the few.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

She said she was proud of me.
It probably was me and not her,
but at least someone is proud.