My biggest fear
is that I will someday be 61
looking back on my life
as an imposter in a body
I don’t own
that I won’t
have stretched the skin and
scarred the cracks
or let the sun into my retina
I fear I won’t have drunk from life
as one drinks from a waterfall
part of a beautiful cosmic rushing
that only exists to **** you.

I read the numbers on headstones
and count the warning
that my life exists as a dash.
I have pocked my face with dots
so I’ll exist as morse code after
I’m gone
so that the synapses in my
alwaysthelightson brain
will sink into the soil as static
and evaporate into the sky
where I’ll live as lightning,
striking the tall boreal pines.



I read thunderstorms
to speak to the dead,
offering prayers of roots
and bloodshot eyes.
I can hear what
they’ve been telling me
all along
deep in my nerves
we’re not alone
and
we’ll be ok.