OBIT [Music]

Music—died on August 7, 2015. I made
a video with old pictures and music for
the   funeral.    I   picked   Hallelujah   in
acapella. Because  they  weren’t  really
singing, but  actually crying.  When  my
children    came    into    the    room,    I
pretended   I   was   writing.   Instead   I
looked at my mother’s old photos.  The
fabric  patterns  on  all  her  shirts.  The
way she held her hands together at the
front of her body.   In each picture,  the
small brown purse  that now sits under
my desk.   At the funeral, my brother-in-
law    kept   turning   the   music    down. 
When  he  wasn’t  looking,  I  turned  the
music  up.    Because  I  wanted  these
people  to  feel  what  I  felt.    When  I
wasn’t   looking,    he   turned   it   down
again.   At the end of the day, someone
took  the  monitor  and  speakers  away. 
But the music was still there.  This was
my first understanding of grief.

OBIT [Memory]

Memory—died August 3, 2015.  The
death was not sudden but slowly over a
decade.  I wonder if, when people die,
they  hear  a  bell.   Or  if  they  taste
something sweet, or if they feel a knife
cutting them in half, dragging through
the flesh like sheet cake.  The caretaker
who witnessed my mother’s death quit. 
She holds the memory and images and
now they are gone.  For the rest of her
life, the memories are hers.  She said
my mother couldn’t breathe, then took
her last breath 20 seconds later.  The
way I have imagined a kiss with many
men I have never kissed.  My memory
of  my  mother’s  death  can’t  be  a
memory but is an imagination, each
time the wind blows, leaves unfurl
a little differently.

Mr. Darcy

Then we are in the back seat of a car kissing
           not the light kind but one where our
    hands are on each other’s cheeks holding
                 each other’s heads as if they will fall

off why does so much love come at the beginning
           then disappear then once again at the moment
      before death why can’t the same kind exist
                  in between in the breaths in the

afternoon in the sitting room in a place of costumes
            little girls dress like princesses one pink one
      blue one yellow they wear plastic heels because
                 they still think they will never fall

Dear P.

Someone will        love you     many will      love

you         many will brother you   some of these

loves will        bother you   some   will      leave you

one might        haunt   you      hunt you in your

sleep        make you       weep the tearless kind of

weep the         kind of weep   that drowns your

organs     slowly    there are little oars  in your body      

little boats   grab onto them and row and        row

someone will tell you      no       but you won’t   know

he is    right until you have   already        wrung your  

own heart dry    your hands dripping knives    until

you have    already   reached your hands into       his       

body and put them through his        heart     love is

the only thing that       is not    an       argument