Spilled teacup of life you
blossom brown,
curling as discarded ribbons being peeled
from the driftwood.
You are left
from the changing.
Your arc
has ended.

If I could,
I’d give prayer.
Or bidding, or
chant involving feet and beat and
cast the Soul back into you

but,
Death is one way. As a river goes.
As the planet
turns.

And you are turning swiftly.

Glass fogging in the light you
are under
Night’s breath, charring you solemn and
maroon,
like a throat
newly
slit.

Like a tongue reddened by fever,
eye blushing
veined by lack of sleep,
there is no rushing the verity
of the taxing
creep of the misery,
eagerness to reach.
A washed up Body,
hungry
to go back
to the Sea.

I wish it not to be.

I wish it to be tomorrow, yesterday,
some soon far off or some past
so long forgot.

I wish for the soil to rise for your sweet heart
another day,
another hour,
another moment but not this moment, no,

not this moment.

But in this wish
you are already
vanished.

The foxes have already come and pried you open,
piece by piece.
The beetles have already carried you up
and rolled you away.
The feast has already
occurred; all the dark is starving always.
There is nothing
of you
left.

I arch upward to give plea to some
godliness,
but

I look to the swelled Earth,
and sense,
and hear,

Gods have no say here.

Gods have no say.

I lay my head down.
I cry my ghost
clean.

It is the cruelest surrender
I have ever known.

Could ever be.