by Sam Rush
& for Kai
It snowed last week & the clouds slept lower.
I wonder where your body went without you,
who unraveled it & what came falling
from their mouths. I think of you; a weighted
sky; dirt, loosening itself in welcome;
what it is to bury: to deem ready
to give back; to kill: to call a body
just a body, to turn to flesh & name
the rest, the lost, the still of us fever
dream prophecies of flightless birds
about the heavens they can’t reach. We know
the sky was falling long before these days.
It’s just, it seems, the ground thaws out softer
for us, now. Hungry or buckling or kind.