I am a ghost town. I am a breath.
I move with the awareness of vodka as it is poured
over a wound. Every morning
I repeat myself in the funeral parlor
with my headphones on. I unwrap candies
directly into the trash basket. This music isn't music
that can be turned off at will.
It is the ocean pulling back her turtles
once they've laid their eggs on the shore.
It takes the snakebite further
towards the heart. It is a father
as he shows his daughter the dead body
by inserting both hands
under her armpits and raising her up
as if from the dead. It is me
looking at her white underwear,
thinking nothing. I won't be partial to the answers
I recite in front of the living today.
I won't be taken aside and given money.
I won't be wearing lipstick
on my teeth. I won't be. Today.
And tomorrow I won't know any better.
I won't see my skeleton
reconstructed out of three thousand
unsmoked cigarettes—glued to each other
and smelling so badly of want.