each day that was
Dismembered
our introduction your departure
thick and heavy July night
weighted down stars
a careless moon
Too hot even for dogs and coyotes to quarrel
A night made for owls
A night made for those who see best in the dark
toads, torpid in driveway light
and dung beetles
and drunken moths driven into the flames of citronella candles on the patio
beautiful and stupid
A night like that
no less ordinary than the nights we are born.
Or the nights when we die.
I remember the earth breaking open hours before the dawn would break (and days before something else broke and fell into a crevice in the Great Sand Dunes)
all the things we carry
and miscarry.
I remember that pause before the earth exhales and starts over
reveals the pink glow of new skin
my body made
a grave
space carved
where no space could be
held
a presence(an absence)
an invisible unnameable shape (though in truth I have given you many names)
a year past
and still
stilled
Still, life
still, birth
quietly dilating like the moon
little earthquakes no one feels
on the surface
because they haven’t been called down to their knees yet
the way seeds take root before they flower
clawing downward
away from an unbearable sun
wiping out the shadows that confirm our shape and size and substance
the way seeds shatter and plunge roots into the earth no one sees
the way seeds shatter and bleed into something
beautiful
and stupid
the way sand dunes refuse to hold a shape long enough to memorize
the crevices and wrinkles and hidden lines of newborn and old worn skins
swallowing up the footprints that might have left a trail
a point on a map that shows
you are here
The way we erased one another, bled one another to bone, to dust
How form yields and dissolves and we call it birth
there is a lot I forget
an amnesiac and prodigal twilight,
undecided which way to tilt the axis
keeping vigil in the dead of night
scattering your absence in secret trails
marked only by quartz and a carpet of pine needles and the skull of a mouse
the owl left
How do we forget what we never knew? How do we miss someone we never met?
in passing
and still.
I remember each day
was
dismembered
and your departure became
my arrival (but it took many names to name it)
your death, nameless
birthed me
named me (so many names it took for me to answer)
on a night like tonight
with a coyote at the fence and four barking dogs
A night made for owls
A night made for those who see best in the dark
the way seeds shatter first
and grow from there.
