i wanna dive head first
into a map of the night skies
trapped inside our four-walled room;
maybe this is where black holes go to die
and they can all stare back at me —
swallowing a chaos of sobs
and a chaos of all your favorite songs;
regardless, i’ll dive into the night skies,
or what it used to be
and name these stars – the ones that remain anyway,
after you.
after me.
after us;
at least they take a long time to die –
long enough for flowers to droop and fall apart
on weeds and lonely epitaphs.

and dear, i hope heaven is holding you closer than i could ever had;
tell me, did you, like sylvia
write suicide notes and call them poetry?

and god do i hope that heaven is holding you so close,
you forget all of the world’s sadness
you once took for your own.

out here, the calendula falls and
my eyes mourn over petal-covered graves
poems cannot hope to beautify.