let me conjure up the thousand years
after we were born
let me sift though these memories
as they lay revised
cut deep through lines
of poems and stories
with an editor’s hacksaw precision
oozing with such bloody intention
now you’ve burned through me
with difficulty
poured your poisons down
with an inclination towards faith
while i lay mustering up refusal
to believe in
the importance
of any of this
and with your ashes
i ‘ve surrendered
covered in the dust of you
i’ve given the last effort
swallowing the remains
of your hot gift
i’m left, choking
on the lonely gristle
of what once meant
more than
this weak dose of the mediocre
i leave on today’s pages
what we remembered together
now sits on your invisible headstone
unread
like your last, raspy whispers
unheard
if i could only speak again
without italics
without leaving exclamation points
dangling in this antiseptic air
you might hear what began as
a whimper
manifested later
into a scream
to the night
the lines of these pages
are filled now with discomfort
and a deep to the bone
uncertainty of reasoning
through transcription
nothing roars out these days
leave me to dovetail into
these endings
dropping them in silence as
live morsels of
your raw meat
fall
left in fields
covered in thorny bushes
i can no longer name
our words and memories
best buried
mean nothing now
when left
as a feast
we cannot reclaim