Do you remember the questions
you used to ask about dying?
About grief and then pain
that wash over you in freezing pales of regret?
Are you supposed to remember every minuscule detail
before you completely forget?

You choke on your own verses
to convince yourself
and then everyone else
about acceptance--
the magic that should lead to recovery
yet, knowing that
most poems
are just lengthy epitaphs
for all the people
we refuse to bury alive;
that most poets die
as they try to relive
faded images,
wishing they could
turn back time.

There is love in lamentation--
in how the living die with the dead;
how years of November air
become the oxygen
that slowly suffocates them,
how the things they love most
create consuming black holes
they still succumb to
long after
their beloved's faux passing.