I don’t know how I did it, / loved you all those years in the quiet landscape / of a burning vineyard, of a toppling mountain…
Late June fields greening under a mottled sky. An oriole slashes orange against a shingled Cape Cod.
Each time something went missing— the photo album of my first year, postcard from a forgotten friend…
Bloodstains left / on the sidewalk / Body bags, / Yellow tape, / Why don’t you think about the consequences / You’re going to have to face?
The smell is like nothing else. / Sickeningly sweet and kind of smoky, / like something burning and rotting at the same time, / it filled my father’s hospital room / and stuck to our clothes and nostrils / long after he died.