“It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.”
—Toni Morrison

When you die, I’ll wear you like invisibility
keep you like a phantom limb. I’ll cast spells
on my skin, leaving enough braille
to remember what rot blurs.

Why are we trained to cut red strings, to shake
off pain so fast? Why am I still sitting here,
rocking between straight tie business meetings
and strip naked runaway wolf-child.

Body and soul feasting at opposite ends
of the table—realms apart. Legs crossed
like kindergarten, like bowed cherry stems.

I’ll beg your ghost back, I’ll say:
let’s pass moths between our mouths,
build a town of pumpkins and Christmas trees.

I’ll maneuver around your shadow
during morning rituals and I’ll have to remember
to place you in the ground before work.

Excessive fancy is a prescription. They’ll cram me
with pills, but I won’t stop watering you
and if drums are welcome in every song
why not love in every poem?

I’d love you: present tense and remember
how you used to open me each morning,
astonished that the night could change a body so much.

I will build a something, with chewed paper for legs
and kite arms, to fly,
to slow dance furious in the sky with you while I sleep.
I won’t let you die alone.