Lay down in the gurney and just sleep.
I’ll try to remember but I’m unsure how much to keep.
There’s a glaze on your eyes that faded too soon.
There’s only so much a body can take.
Who am I to pretend that I know the limit of love and care for anyone or anything?
The knot in your stomach got too much to bear and now mine just sits in my throat.
Can’t find the words to speak through my swollen gums.
There’s only so much I can do like cut my hair and watch the past wash away.
You knew of nothing more perfect than to have death take you by the hand with the one you love.
And now we just huddle around and try to make sense of this cold that sinks in so slow.
I can’t be angry because I know that this is how you wanted to go, but it doesn’t make it any easier to just float on in an empty hole.
There’s a cold side to a bed and a towel on the floor that I can’t muster the strength to move.
There’s a picture in a frame that will lie by your grave.
There’s a part of us all that left just to join you somewhere.
And if there’s a god, I hope he treats you well because you deserved more than that living hell, that physical imprisonment.
If there’s one thing to learn, it’s that there is some peace in this world; you just have to leave it to truly know.

In Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia
--as always , then known by another name
illegal unlatching teeth, locked glottal stop
man, ungassed, sings in fields, in
cabarets, in your kitchen while preparing din-
ner. As always, you are found out
the canary, the catch of a too used
tongue, the granule of
human flesh.
And, as always, you
are peeled down to onion core
goose pimpled and bleeding. Placed out-
side, and have you ever watched trees
boil out, then freeze over, glaciating
your emaciated body? Catching in our
throats as rings unlatch one by one to
congeal the skin with sap?