For One Dead

What would you like, little bone-star?

Would the suicided person please stand up?
Would they please tell the height of their pain
            the very top of the trees of it
            where it extends dentricles upward

would we prefer their death or this saying of it?

they would sit with the right person
the right person
and tell their pain.
that person would build a shield around the pain
a thin wooden structure half circle uneven
fluted.
they would leave it there for three days.

on the third would pick it up
and say                      their words. What words they have.
This would be the listening & the telling.

Copyright © 2020 by Helen Dimos. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 5, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.