I still feel like a boy sometimes,  
tempted to roll out  
toward the edge of things,  
where the Earth falls away  
into silence,  
and the warm dark swallows me whole.

I lie here,  
stillness itself,  
lost in the scent-memory  
of my mother’s dying breath.

I am there, fully—  
with her agonal breathing,  
cold pale limbs,  
and I am outside,  
in the palm’s slow sway  
under the warm subtropic night,  
undifferentiated.

With her final burgundy heartbeats  
fading,  
I am singing  
in the last chorus  
of ten thousand cicadas.