& nobody ever tells you that life is full of mini-deaths,

or that // it never gets easier to erase your past into

memory. // Memory — little more than obsessive

remembering but we feed it like a habit, // until the

heart transcends the body & its tiresome hunger.

It never gets easier to erase your past into memory. //

When my grandmother died I watched a million little

deaths become a cloud. // Until the heart transcends

the body & its tiresome hunger // you cannot escape

the hands of it.

When my grandmother died I watched a million little

deaths become a cloud // & they hovered over her

body for warmth, mourning their penultimate death. //

You cannot escape the hands of it. // Every day

another part of me crawls into unnameable territory.

& they hovered over my body for warmth, mourning

their final death. // The doorway said “know, that god

hears prayers” so I became an atheist. // Every day

another part of me crawls into unnameable territory. //

Thank [ ] for that.

DOUBLE VISION

My grandmother’s body

was still warm and I was reckless enough to

call him mine. His hands on my bare waist like

electric paddles and I didn’t care because I was

immortal. If death has taught me anything it’s that I’m

alive and dangerously close to the boiling point. The

next day

my grandmother’s body

was cool and I drove to his apartment just to

unbutton a pair of jeans. I didn’t tell him that I felt

like the Main Character of The Grief Story, that I

knew my body less than he did, but I repeated I trust

you, I’m ready, I trust you, I’m ready when what I

really meant was closer to I could, I want to, and even

this knowledge would only come to me once it was

over.

My grandmother

wasn’t a ghost yet and I allowed him to

become the entire sky above me. My whole life —

split open in every way imaginable. There isn’t much

that I can recall in detail but I know he washed his

hands. I can smell the latex, picture the fresh razor

burn. And, of course, I remember the lights. How he

turned them off and snored and I thought is this all

there is? Is this it? Am I even here at all?

Then, all at once,

I knew.

THE AFTERMATH

I’m waist-deep in April

but my stomach is in February.

In the parking lot outside of my pharmacy

I stare at an orange bottle of antidepressants

that insurance no longer covers.

If my therapist were still my therapist

I’d say mindfulness isn’t cutting it anymore.

The problems I blew into her tissues

seem unbearably simple, now.

Nobody was dead.

I’d yet to experience the romantic love I craved

so deeply, and therefore had never sat, helpless,

within its endless darknesses.

I gorged on happiness hours before its expiration date. Potential

stretched before me like a dinner table.