I watch everyone getting older, but you.
How many mothers’ bodies are buried outside
churchyards, for choosing to lie down with
their children? They knew how quickly skies
could morph from blue to black;
in liquid despair, the power of their pain
sucked the air from the cosmos.
My mother dreams of a house covered in vines,
while I feel its bones; leached and breaking.
I understand the desire to follow, when infinity
pools of tears flood my hollowed hands,
and each time unprovoked, breath is excised
from my chest. Watching, as other people
control grief in public places;
when they rarely do that with laughter.
Misunderstanding this profound absence at the table;
we look to one another for answers.
Whenever the tide drags out, I sift through the mudflats,
searching for fragments of you;
in spectral compensation.