bud light and soku prophecies shotgun from
one tongue to the next like mist; a coat of rice
wine and Zoloft we chugged between classes,
and filled back with the tap before stretching
our toes to close daddy’s cabinet. generations
will repeat the line: nothing’s new beneath this
sun, even when nothing is the way you
remembered it to be. I show my mother your
voicemails. I’m so resolute while we laugh. I
listen in the dark of 5 a.m. the way a boy
shoots birds down from the sky—feeling
nothing until I cry. I roam the natural section,
circle the index of an old biology book, mark
your name on the catalogue I’ve started on the
evolution of men in my life—sundry bodies;
same, infinite face. even in memory, you’re
bubbling in the other room. an unstable
apparition, an amalgamating species or trick of
light just outside the aging glass. hovering
through trees and cursing the slab of an
overpass, arguing with me in phantom tongue
about whether or not it’s technically an
overpass. reminded again of the ritual of
waste, or the pathological pseudo-silence to
which I harmonize, I repeat your name to
myself in a circle, a secret prayer to a secret
god (or the last traces of my father’s OCD)—so
placing you in everything, and never finding
you. save the death of 5 a.m., and the stripped
endlessness and sanctity of 5 a.m., when I
remember you said you’d never let anyone
push your hair back. so I kiss the only part of
you truly bare, your naked skin where neck
meets scalp, and in the soft dark I tell you the
sun is changing. new light is bleeding through
the blinds. and I’ll love you till I die, but not
after.