—I’LL BE WRITING ABOUT YOU FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE

 

 

The Collapse

   (after Station Eleven)

 

I don’t know if

I’d call it a poem,

what I wrote you

in those final moments,

or the words you sang

back to me over the wire—

scratchy static interrupting

every now and then,

a frantic warning itself—

the collapse hanging between us

like a blood-dripping bat.

But we knew then, the both of us,

that our child was dead,

that all children were, or would be,

the future, too, the earth gone

foul and sour. Ending abruptly.

Words unspooling like a

kite lifting off, out of reach.

You staring at your horizon,

and me hopelessly

searching for mine.