Listen:
A student asks for eulogy guidance.
The next day, I have a brother and
we discuss sociopaths, cold worms,
how we ended up so undisturbed.
Memory. Now that’s a thing a girl
can get behind. I remember caring
for the strays under our house, coaxing
the squirrels out from the alabaster
walls. Always sick and on the edge,
I’d watch them die as we all should
—alone and unsophisticated. Was my
interest in salvage or ritual? Officious?
A sort of wasted communion? Or was
I simply a child whose home was framed
furred and alive. Memory. I remember
the first poem I ever wrote—a clementine
full-faced and gasping as I consumed it
whole, even the juices hollered.
