[Tet]

ט

There’s nothing the plague dead did that we

didn’t do. We gave our unprotected bodies

to strangers too—before we met & burned

each other’s initials into our arms. Black ink

& ash smudge, foreheads anointed the day

of fasting. Neither of us knows why

he deserved to survive, the virus

a hummingbird hovering above

the flower’s stamen before gliding off

to another bloom. On Granville Island

I, ghost, took you, ghost, to be my lawful—

my body still craving to be broken into

like a window; yours the rock that smashes.