A caribou walking through water
with the moon in its mouth
Or a girl scraping pink chalk
along the sidewalk with lemonade
in her hair Or even my own mother
tearing cellophane with her teeth
as if able to keep the family intact
one polaroid at a time Is not enough
to say we are born in loss and later die
with flowers bleeding on wet cement
We flip a deck of tarot and read
a scythe glinting through soft red
winter wheat We drink until the throat
becomes a vase we could break open
with a whisper We wait like sugar
for the hummingbirds to wisp out.
We don’t say it aloud but Kill me
please We don’t want to go slowly
unless through the storm of an eye
And in this summoning we poison
the air by speaking through it, lowly