Tearing down the house is a thing I do
without putting much thought into the action.
Every quirky story about how you weren't so bad, doing better now
It feels like lying, taking the soft, damp-rotted wood in my hands
breaking it apart, not into splinters but mulch
I keep expecting someone to say it is done with,
That all the substance is gone now
But nobody stops to bring attention to what I've been holding
My disingenuous tongue
My treacherous breath
It's a strange thing to be able to physically feel loss when you hug someone.
Now you are skin and bones, missing even more of your teeth
And fifty pounds of healthy days

Do you think the dead weep for themselves?
Do they mourn the living?
Do they cry for what we will face or for what they will never face?
The living mourn themselves.
I know this because I have been doing so for years,
Mourning both you and I
as if every night when the light puts up her hair in preparation to sleep
that we lay down and will sheets into suits, beds into coffins
Nestle ourselves into the soft sides of the moon
Fully expecting the day to pass us by like so many other things which quietly do the same.
And when the off-key voice of the sun causes us to crack open our eyes again in wonder of the new day,
In resignation, I cannot reconcile its face with what it was before.
The difference between you and the days though is that one of them
you will sleep, and sleep, and sleep and dream not at all
until your body belongs again to the earth and then recycled into something else
And I will still be here

I know you cannot last. This is a thing which must happen to things
I just don’t want whatever takes you to be your own fault
I am tired of mourning someone who is alive
Of speaking as if you are already a ghost