Paradise on Black Ice
Heaven hunts round for those that find itself below, and then it snatches.
—Emily Dickinson
I wind the sheet of elegy while he's still alive, I can't help it, I follow his breath while he sleeps, greet each coming and going, with an Ave. (Because of how the quick become the dead.) But right now he's showering with a gospel choir, radio half on and half off that station. And today's heaven is half hell, half whole, half hurt, hunting every naked thing with the same harsh delight.