The poem says so little.

Food is a ghost that saves my mouth.

Hi, all my gods stop dreaming at once.

Dear Ethel Cain

I try to sing. I am not cold. Where deep designs of making hold.

I die and look for my mother.
I die and look for yours.

I die and my brothers don’t.
I die in Ohio to impress
with a bruise
an icicle. I die and my daughter

I die and my sons

I die
and which
of my sons

I die and god says
that is not
salt
that is movie
salt

Death gets over nobody, I die

there

I die on somebody’s birthday

I die bc pretty
Because I can

I die where
I die with a rich interior death

I die for rich poets who’ve time to be good parents

Love dies from god

I die and see an uncle trying to drink his eyes back
I die and you can’t
I die in a shadow from three thumbtacks

meant
for the savior
of a self
harming sister

I die in my father’s dead rabbits
all of them
die once

Dear Ethel Cain

The lie of my childhood became a lie. Let's compare suicide notes. Turtle, ashtray, ghost. Time is an angel knocked unconscious by a star. I had an idea for a resurrection story but the 3D glasses failed lol. I remember your fake mother on the set of a zombie movie telling *** jokes for the dead. Confession number one: I was born without a missing finger. Our bathroom door falls asleep before we do.

Dear Ethel Cain

An abuser loses their phone, their fingerprint. Longing faces its first deadline. The eating competition of our dreams is on its third snow delay. The work my body puts into me is killing my children. I think of that fingerprint for 100 years in sunscreen time. My skin turns white from being seen by a ghost. My teeth go grey. And comb their fear.

Dear Ethel Cain

I lick sugar from the windshield of a deer-shaped car. Make a bird from a hunger ballon. Have an ****** that belongs in a stomach to lovebombed plastics. Catch photophobia from the ghosts of angel suicides. Fix a machine with a drinking machine. Listen, glisten. Etc.

Dear Ethel Cain

A microwave in a wellness center is left alone long enough to miss a bible. Fate does its work early. Babies make loss fun again. I try with my gut health to stop time. Angels, born on, turn off.