We went batwatching in the fields behind our school all eerie liquid in the lambent night
told how furglow wingbeats purred
beyond the skrying of our childish lights.

They see with sound and echo-
So you said.

Imagined heartbeats whisked around my head.

Today I went to a hundred funerals
Today I wept a thousand times
I saw a million faces
All ready with their lines

Today I waited through
Ten thousand people
Claiming
To have known you

Today I lit a hundred candles
I wished a hundred wishes
I thought a thousand times if
Only I were the one
Sleeping with the fishes

Today I wore a hundred dresses
Some with lace
Or ribbons on the back
But I never noticed the design
'Cause all of them were black

Today I followed a hundred processions
Leading steady past a thousand graves
And a thousand grieving faces
Looked up to meet my eyes
As if to say “I know you”
And I know the pain that you have faced




Today I walked for miles and miles
In a procession that sometimes
Had horses and sometimes
Had shiny cars
And I walked in front to lead them on
Or I walked in back so nobody could see too closely
The decisions racing through my head
Should I stand?
Should I leave
Should I wail in agony into the sky
Or just burst out into hysterical laughter

And today
A hundred times
I finally rose to speak
As I always knew I would
At a hundred different podiums
In a hundred different dresses
In two hundred different shoes
To a thousand different people
Sometimes a small intimate gathering
Sometimes a haunted silent crowd reaching as far
As the eye can see
Past headstones
And tombstones
And flowers with their grieving faces
I looked out across this a hundred times
And yet I never knew just what to say
I burst into to tears
Or fits of fury
I stood silently hoping
That I’d never need to know what to say
Except maybe one day
But far in the future
After our dreams are reached
And our goals are achieved
And we are proud of who we are

Not sitting and waiting
For the test results to come back
As in my head strolls a party
All dressed in black

Today I went to a hundred funerals
I sang a hundred songs, true
Today I went to a hundred funerals
Every one of them for you

Sun lips, I remember it clearly:
We found each other on the shore.
You told me something I could not hear
Then you retreated quietly,
Gently tiptoeing back over the water
Little splashes here and there
Falling little flickers and flashes
Drops of glowing red
Dipped in plasma
Burning my skin as I chase your shadow
Feet falling through, you Jesus lizard
Where did you go?
If to travel a straight line means to chase a ghost
And if to stare at the sun is to go blind
So be it.
And you said something about butterflies
But you knew only moths follow the light.

Every time I kiss you
After a long separation
I feel
I am putting a hurried love letter
In a red mailbox.

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou **** me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

When I was eight years old,
I overlooked a moment of compassion
And challenged the will of a fellow third grader
Compelled by my ignorance
She gave the most astute summary of my life ever uttered.

When I was eight years old,
A frizzy haired girl asked me an impudent question
A question of infinite importance:
How do you sleep?
How do you sleep at night, since you know yourself?

When I was eight years old, my arrogant mind brimmed with resentment
Reaffirming that I,
I, apart from my arrogance,
Was the best person I knew.

I was eight years old, and a prophet had spoken.

Eight years later,
I long to be swallowed by the sheets
Eyes stare mockingly at the dormant ceiling
Clinging to the handrails
As my train of thought
Careens off the tracks
Exploding in a cloud of terror and regret

Eight years later,
I long for the simple arrogance of my eight year old mind
I long to close my eyes
And remember nothing

Because today,
Today I am sixteen
And tomorrow I will be twenty-four
And the next day I shall be eighty

When I'm eighty,
I'll stare at the bleached walls
Succumbing to the force of the past
As it consumes the present.

When I turn eighty-eight,
I'll look to the end of my starched bed
And He shall smile
Saying, "Well done!"

I hope I lie, when I'm eighty-eight,
Because If I am honest
If I tell the truth
I do not know who he is
And I never have
I will be cast away
because, eighty years before,

When I was eight years old,
I was arrogant
But still innocent
eighty years from death
and eighty years from shame
I could have heeded those words
The words of the frizzy haired girl

When I was eight years old,
I could have decided
I could have had him sing me to sleep
I could have died entirely unlike myself.

Now that I'm sixteen,
I still do nothing.