The Summer I Stole My Dead Sister’s Ashes And Tried To Carry Her Across State Lines To See The Ocean That She Had Never Seen And No One Understood Why I Was The Prairie Rain

The dead can see nothing that is shown to their remains.

There are many waters both inside
and out is each a chance at drowning

or salvation. Some dreams pour through me like a night
with no moon. Umbral and un-navigated. In parallel worlds
you still live

and throw your purse down angry because I left the party early

because it meant so much to you for me to be there

and here you are under our grandmother’s bed because
some nights I can hear her like she is sleeping under me
I don’t believe in telling a body what a body knows at night like

the night you drove the car under the over pass and told me we should run away

three weeks before you died.

The dead cannot hear our apologies

about love or our wants and I’ve placed this poem all over trying to write the end with my
body intact

and yet why should I live while you do not? The sun rises and hurts.

This is not a poem about what comes before or after. The sun sets and
hurts. This is a poem
about pouring

everything out of the vessel and hoping something might find a way

back in