written 30 jan 2021
how perfect to die washed in the full moon soft, concrete-splayed, as if one had been swooned soft. i saw what death does to a body still living long before i let it touch mine; feared it’d make me too soft. how my mother sobbed like an alien thing, and i mothered her; in her own voice i cooed soft. i did not speak for one hundred and sixty-eight days when she died. only she could turn this fool soft. that same summer, a river showed me how endings feel wrapped in its arms, so huge, so dark, such a cool soft in that wet and buzzing void, i saw not a single face. i knew then that ends are not a kind, but a cruel, soft. on the full moon last night, a woman fell a great height i watched her flesh meet the ground, a pale, true soft. it was then i swore mom whispered, “█████ – to live is to cherish those wounds that make you soft.”