whether the air around me is filled with you
or if perhaps you are ground
and the roots steal your faces
for sweetgum leaves in spring
or if when I feel the weight of living
cloth pressed across my lips
the heft of the paper grocery bag
if this is the final weight
the only touch and you are quiet
in your dark universe
as I will be one day too
when you were cut from your mother
was she lost to you then
my daughter picks resurrection lilies
in the backyard and perhaps I've lost her already
already I trail behind her wake
and the flowers are sickly sweet
how to be sure
about the slugs the watermelon buds
the stars which may have already burnt away
how to see in the dark what might be left