You

You died the year after I cut your hair

You're living in Brooklyn and having affairs

You're making bad movies and seeing nice girls

You tell me it's nearly the end of the world

You talk to my dad about soil and leaves

You heard the trucks roll past the monastery

You flew on a plane to the desert, and then

You wrote to your wife, typewriter and pen

You pet my back while I puke in the florals

You keep me awake, finding loopholes in curses and morals

Your melon-green eyes and the derelict view

Your nails in my hair, happy birthday to you

You're credentialed, shacking with your babydoll

You're cut up by surgeons and I never call

You cover the floors with sawdust and clay

You know that I lied and will never explain

You steady Mom's papery arms in the dark

You save for a high-rise that faces the park

You smoke through the winter and talk Nabokov

You cradle my hand and you ask for my love

You don't recognize your daughter's face

You cry when you think about heat death and all of that waste

Your blood in the grout lines — and who was who? —

You felt something departing, perhaps it was you

You found a diary at a book exchange

You told us that time is incredibly strange

You hopped in the shower, you hopped on a train

You're living in Brooklyn, you're living in Spain

You call to demand who had been in my bed

You sew up your wounds with a golden thread

You're six and you're flinching away from a kiss

You're sure that you raised me much better than this

You burn through the so-called livelong days

You slacken and die and pack your fine body away

You're frozen in frame, do you feel something new?

Does it happen to me when it happens to you?