You are dead and you made us in that hospital.
That lump of flesh in the pit of you: clay.
With your hands you grasped it, pulled into yourself: mouth:
umbilical. Like a snake consuming itself. This is what they mean
when they say that circles are perfect. The water
was warm. It snowed outside for days. I visited
my sister
and wondered about brains. She speaks of her therapist
as a friend.
I speak as if I don't know I am
a person
and imagine
the rush of light in each of our heads. The heady fire
revealed in MRIs. The showerhead can barely contain the steam
and nothing cools me off. Back to our younger years
in the libraries
when we were still constructing ourselves. You said
such lovely things
that when you died it felt like deaf. I can no longer
hear
you singing. Except now, I grasp
at the hard body of a psychology textbook, reading,
some exam tomorrow-- listen, you could've come to Harvard, too,
if that is what you wanted, if your body would let you-- and your quiet
suggests the problem is that I am stuck in the frame of my
nakedness cross-legged bottomed
laughing souped into the bottom
of the shower curtains: and they open: the steam: the still
images of sliced brains in my textbooks: coffee-cups
emptied by the lips I have taken from you: quiet,
yes, no wonder why. When your hands
did their last thing, when they reached into your own mouth
to spool yourself into you and the books we sent you
that you couldn't read because you were dissolving
When your hands
did that: did you think: could you: and if
you could: do you
think
that was what made you: you the whole time?
Or was it: the departing of the air: as if to sigh:
when it gets so cold outside that every whisper:
feels monumental because: you can see: the clouds:
you speaking before you: before: your own eyes. And then you blink
for a very long time in a single still flutter, stuck.