december second two thousand twelve

we laugh and shift awkward
leaning on our lilting limbs trembling
forward to blue horizon and the shouting mists that
never seem to say too much beyond what is
obvious already anyway to us the milk-white
shrouded splendor of some other person’s sadness
when there wasn’t anything left to put
between his teeth he had to eat
a graveyard shift instead there was an earthquake
there he explained and we believed him as we dotted
our eyelids with gray but not beneath we did not want
our crying to leave track marks like his trackmarks we
can’t look at trains the same way anymore, we are going to drink
an avalanche of sad rather than believing this it was so dark
inside this window room we could see manhattan like a mockery to
him that he would never be there anymore
again and again he let us rest our heads on top of his broken bones like
centerpieces stretching over the heaviness of lines
i know a thousand better ways to cry than this but all of them
involve an easel or a skywriting plane scattering orange and gray
ashes into water that used to run rivulets off your face like sweat
i know a thousand better reasons we could sweat after this
and i don’t have anything black to wear to your funeral
but i guess i’ll go anyway and count the number of people who you never
even really liked i think you really liked me but i’m not sure i liked you
but i know i like you now
and that’s what counts,
i think, when your body’s
in the ground.