death can't breathe on tuesdays

In the otiose evening of August — it is always August — you are dead. Death is so loud, I say, or think I say, between the clamorous pangs drowning a whole world out. I do my best to sit with your death, a wish whispered to the heavens, returned as something so deafening, as something so boisterously full, it fills my body until I’m dead too. Death is so hungry, I say, I’m sure I say, this insatiable mass of knowing, floating high above myself, my death reaching to catch your death, keep it quiet. My death gathers and gorges on your death. My death makes a feast of the noise. My death makes your death not quite so real. I make your death my death until: In the otiose evening of August — it is still August — you are resurrected. Another wish whispered to the heavens, a loss still relentlessly present: Be still, this grief, go home. 2023-06-27