i stand in a pit of deep anxiety,
its shapeless form outweighs
all the sunsets i stored
inside my skin —
for keeping,
for the dark.
my arms outstretched towards its colors
are last bits of innocence
the only part untainted,
the only part that doesn't flinch —
at the voices,
the movements,
the arms clawing from below.

six feet deep —
maybe a higher number,
people cannot mourn what they cannot see.
soon these spare lights, these spare words, this spare comfort,
they will all dissolve into a shapeless, formless,
state of corruption;
i am a body, hazy in a jar
dumped at the back of an anthropology museum.
preserved, not rotting —
people do not mourn things that do not rot.
and mourning is all i do in a suspended time,
in a time that moves and doesn't wait.

i stand in a pit — on my feet
with twisted legs and washed-out skin.
i still, as though before a mirror
seeing this weight in full clarity —
it shows in my face, blank as a sheet of ***** ice
where i am buried in.
i still, in my pit, my feet, staring:

the rest of the world is shapeless as it moves past me,
formless as it walks by.