The day we broke fast it was late July & your body tasted like heat
& rain, even though it hadn’t rained all month. That July
the grass died, & then our parents died, & then the neighborhood dogs,
& the cows, too, out in the large fields, & there were flies everywhere,
buzzing like the wrinkles of the elderly. You died last, the day we broke fast,
along with every other boy from the neighborhood. Your bodies
were all empty corpses, sprawled out together flat & open & with hanging tongues,
like a high school football field.

The last night of July I had a dream in which you were the devil,
all red skin & hair like a bucket of moon ***** & missing eyes.
I woke up screaming, but very quietly, because it was still early, 6am,
your eyes were missing & so were you. The last night of July I tried
sneaking out of the house & into the small graveyard next to the small church
that rested up the hill by the small school, but your tombstone was missing
& I cried until I didn’t have a throat anymore, until I was just one large body,
very empty, very carved out, like the pool
down the street
that Grandmother used to take me to.