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The land slashed by blades of steel fills me with sorrow;
vines and thistles cling to the asphalt, crushed beneath the rush of passing wheels.
Through the green, I glimpse black scars, the marks of past fires.

How fragile and soft I feel in the wind, the sun’s torment burning in the distant sky.

I do not fear death;
I honor it with each stone I pile carelessly, scraping my hands, living the pain that climbs up my arms.

Each tumble of stones, I rebuild.
Time undoes my creation, only making it truer.
This is my labor, this is truth.
I bless the stones with blood: death does not scare me.
I prepare for it with care.

My mother always smelled of shea butter
and cigarettes. She’d fall asleep sitting up,
smoking. If you didn’t take it and put it out
there’d be a new hole in her comforter.

My mother rarely slept at night,
the ants in her legs moved too much.
Some nights she’d ball up her fist and pound
at the bugs. It only helped a little bit.

My mother never showed up on time,
before she left the house she’d have to check her purse:
Cigarettes, backup cigarettes, multiple diet cokes, keys, lighter, cash, phone.
Cigarettes, back up cigarettes, multiple diet cokes, keys, lighter, cash, phone.
Then again to make sure. And ten more times after that.
She was convinced she’d forget something important.

My mother always showed up.
Performances, Awards, Parent teacher conferences,
she was there. Not once did she ever grimace
when I idolized the parent who never was.

My mother always waited for me to react.
When she told me it was stage four,
with her lips pulled tight, trying to hold it in,
She didn’t cry until I started to shake.

My mother always loved me.
In her final moments she spent her energy
reassuring my brother and I,
that she wasn’t giving up on us.

The stillness of a drought day—
an instance, Lucifer smiles.
His smile is last breath,
rattling windows,
bird wings across the skin.
“Say, do you know
what a curse is?”

“I can think of an instance.”

“Tell me.”

“My mother’s mother died
on a wooden table. Her gaze
latched onto my mom’s—”

Wind trapped and twisting,
singing through wooden
cracks, creaking with storm.
We don’t say she drank, we say
the Hibiscus ate her. We don’t say
bruises – she loved lilac
blooms. Midnight-beatings, dress cut
too low at the back. We don’t say
cirrhosis. Her liver bloomed.
We say weakness.

“Is that a curse?”

“It is.” Lucifer’s laugh, the after-
image of humming wishes,
cruelly. “The women
in your family die
strange deaths.”

One, wandered the village roads,
rough, rocky. Barefoot in a night-
gown. Come light me a candle,
she said, “I’m dying.”
She died.

Another, an aunt I never met, laid out
in a pale-green kitchen.

“Bend and kiss her cheek.”
She smelled of fruit left out to boil
in the sun. Hay and sweet corn.
Pumpkin bloated on the fields.
Sunflower rot. Hands pushed me,
“Go on, go ahead. Kiss her,
kiss her.”

Liver left out
in the pale-green kitchen
blooms into lilac-colored
sunflowers. Kiss
the summer. Stillness, wings across
the skin. Sour cherry schnapps
stings the hardest
down your throat.

can I tell you that I hate the smell?
of saline solution, please, I only ask
because I’m not too sure you can hear
me over your own noises. I understand
it must be uncomfortable with the wet
muscles of your throat constricting
over a piece of hard rounded plastic and
a stiff body from a distressing hospital bed
but what I am dealing with is much worse.
the smell I’m telling you is more
horrible than that—that bag you have
hanging above your head, sitting pretty
as the morning light shines through
making it seem like a crystal of life
replacing the blood pUmPiNg, racing,
s t o p p i n g—-through your heart and
turning you cold, a forced shiver pricking
on your rising flesh that even rattles
down to the bone the kind you’d only have
from an October day in November. saline,
plain, yet sharp & burning, a bad alcohol in
my nose I never get used to smell every time
I gave you my blood and coupled with a
machine that tracks an anxious heart
I must feel sorry for myself because
the heartbeats have never sounded so
much like an unwilling harmony between
soft chested birds—beep chirp beep chirp
beeeeeeeee chirp chirp—I’m sorry I
know you’re going to ask why, why
I am doing something like this in the
daylight of your fractured mind but
can I tell you, please, that I hate?
the smell of saline because I’m afraid
no one else will listen to me. even now
you’re closing your eyes on me, don’t
be tired I am almost finished with one
thing left—chirp chirp chirp—don’t you
think it’s silly to fear things like dying?

1. I saved every voicemail, every scrap of paper with his handwriting on it. I tell myself I can hear his voice if I need to, but I never press play.

2. I wander through grocery store aisles just to breathe, pretending he’s in the next one over, maybe buying coffee or reading the ingredients on a jar. For some reason, that always helps.

3. I scream in my car at red lights. I’ve never been so angry at the sun for setting every night like nothing happened.

4. I buried parts of myself in every place we used to go. Now, I can’t go anywhere without feeling like a stranger to myself.

5. I sit in the back pew of an empty church, not praying, but just sitting. I don’t believe in heaven, but sometimes I wish I did.

6. I avoid every single song he liked, convinced the lyrics will tear a new wound open. But at 3 a.m., I press play anyway.

7. I tell stories about him as if he’s still here. I change the endings, make them happier than they were. Sometimes, I even believe my own lies.

8. I keep his picture on my dresser but turn it around on hard days. I know he’s gone, but I can’t stand the look on his face when I’m like this.

9. I grieve him every morning when I wake up and realize it wasn’t all just a dream. And I grieve him every night when I lie down, hoping that maybe, just maybe, it will be.

Mommy! I saw you watching me last night
Peeking ‘round the corner
Trying to make sure
I didn’t do
What you had told
Me not to

Mommy! I had seent you standing in the door
While I played in the yard
I was trying real hard
To make sure
You didn’t hear
The bad words coming out of my mouth
When them boys from down the street
Cheated

Mommy! I heard you callin my name
When I was asleep
I’m glad you did though
Cause the house was real hot
And I couldn’t hardly see
Every body said I was lucky
Cause I coulda died and stuff

Mommy! I heard you clapping for me
When I said my Easter Speech in church
The basket was real pretty and you
Said my dress made me look like a anjul
And that you were real proud of me and stuff

Mommy I tried to tell granny and them
About what you told me about my Easter dress
And about how proud you were
And about how you woke me up in the fire
And about using bad words
And about doing what I’m told
Bout how I see you every night
And bout how you sing me to sleep
And wake me up for school
And bout how you always know where
The stuff is that I thought was lost
But they all look at me funny
And say I’m sweet
Granny just tells me to go play
She tells all the grown folks that
I don’t understand
About death

“Are you ok?” my mother texts.

“No, not really” I respond.

I’m anxious. The tears are waiting behind my eyes.

She texts a photo of my grandmother’s body. White. In a casket.

I wasn’t ready for that to appear on the screen.

“Mommy! Outside! Play outside!”
In my most pleading tone I pull my toddler into me and say, “Mommy can’t play right now, sweetie. Mommy needs to do something important. Please watch your show. I’ll play later.”

A voice comes through a scratchy microphone, “Dorothy Quenzer Altmann was a wife, a mother, a sister, a grandmother…”

I reach for a toothpick to test the cinnamon rolls I just pulled from the oven.

“Death reminds us how fragile life is. Time is not measured in years…”

My son barrels into the room, roaring like the dinosaurs on TV.

I force a smile for him.

“What’s that?” He grabs my phone.

“STOP!” I shout and yank it away from him. He’s not used to seeing me like this.

My pelvis aches. Our third baby, still growing inside, kicks me hard. I wonder if this one is another boy, or a girl.

“Johnny do you have to go potty?” I yell from the kitchen.

My mother enters the frame on screen. She’s wearing a black dress and white pearls. She looks almost normal, except for the glaring face mask.

I turn away.

I need a break.

I serve myself a cinnamon bun from the stovetop. A maternal instinct to save this morning with sugar and carbs.
The eulogies are over, but the camera’s still running.

I watch my family say their final goodbyes, kneeling before the body, dressed in their Sunday best. Their faces are covered with masks and their hands are firmly clasped, despite their normal tendencies to reach out for a squeeze.

I’m in my pajamas a hundred miles away, surrounded by flour on the floor, flowers on the table, and sympathy cards on display.

“The service has ended.”

The screen goes blank.

The middle child stirs in his crib.

I have to change his diaper. I have to clean the kitchen.

But instead I stare at the photo my mother sent me.

They buried her in the dress she wore to my wedding.
She doesn’t look like she’s sleeping.
She looks dead.
The baby kicks again.
I close my eyes and sigh.
Time to go on with my day.
Time to go on living

I tell her I want a comrade.
She tells me she wants a girlfriend.
This will be why the relationship ends.
As per usual I am struggling to get her to understand.
As per usual she is as well.
We’ve been bickering just like our parents do.

She asks me about the future.
I tell her I just want a friend.
She cries in the dark these days.
I’ve taught her how to do that.
Much to my regret.

The worst thing about everything isn’t the end.
That will be a clean, cut pain.
An incision to save healthy skin.
It’s the rotting that hurts the most.
The slow decline into death.
We tried to graft healthy skin onto our wounds.
But there’s only so much you can do before you accept the truth.
Sometimes things rot no matter what you do.

into the water i go
to shed my body
and free my soul

taste the grit
and feel the cold
sand slipping under my toes

darkness then fallows
and it is time
one last gulp
all is done

finally,
you are one

I think he’d be surprised to know I grieve him, Jo.

Sometimes I found him pitiful, asking for a hair of the dog, nudging for physical contact, offering oral, with his good hands now touched up with formaldehyde.

First thing I ask is if it was suicide, it wasn’t. I feel relief. His songs have less than a thousand listens on spotify, and they’re in my wrapped. I once asked for the lyrics, so I can upload and follow as he sings. I wasn’t doing a kindness, I have auditory processing issues, and I like his lines.

He pissed me off for his potential. For how frail he looked, how he reminded me of myself, so I needed to get him up, make him well, because if he was well, maybe I could be well, too. Then I estimated he needed something I couldn’t give, and I needed to fuck well off for a while because I know better than to try to be a liferaft with holes in me.

And then he doesn’t slit his wrists, like he tried, he doesn’t take pills, like he also tried. He just has a seizure while out for a cigarette.

I can’t stop thinking of the dumbest shit. His face below me, his smell when he hugged me, when I felt I feared him, when he said he feels safe with me, when I felt him get annoyed, when he told me I’m intimidating, when I was annoyed; the scent dies, that’s weird.

No one’s gonna smell like Jo, it goes with him. It’s this niche stamp of identity, and I don’t know why it hurts so much to think about. That body getting cremated will not smell like Jo like Jo smelled like Jo. And he’s not there inside my Signal app again, to tell him about my new song, him suggest not to master it, me master it anyways, him say it’s good, maybe I can master my own songs.

He’s not there to record me play my silly little song about being obsessed with another man, and he’s not there to climb the staircase while I compose a song about him climbing up the staircase, and record it on my phone with a grin while he holds the space, appearing confused, not necessarily confused, but confused works, I guess. How safe I must’ve felt, I don’t make songs unless I’m alone. I record it while staring at him, turning the page aggressively. I don’t think any version can replace the original, since he will never sit across from me again.

When I hear his songs now, I can’t ask him what he meant. I was just something stuck in your throat, I chose to not tell. When I looked at his arms, I knew he’d done more damage than my attempt casually, without even calling it that. Everyone knew he needed help. He died ingloriously. I don’t know if mine will be as simple as he. He was good, he wasn’t God, he was too pained to be a saint, too bitter for sweetness, but he was good. He stood up for what he
believed in.

I think he’d be surprised I grieve him, Jo. I don’t know what he would say, and whether it’d make a difference if he said it drunk, of well fed and calm. I think he’d like that I’m dissing on him. He swallowed compliments better when they had a touch of spice, and I’m the same. I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t help him. I don’t know what happens with the jacket he wore. His jewellery. His piano. I want that piano.

I have silly things only I know the sentimental value of. Wagamama chopsticks in a book, a rock, butterfly origami. I wonder what happens to those things he owned. I start speaking to him inside my mind, not as a wish, but comfort. I don’t think it could’ve gone another way, but are you surprised I grieve you? Did you find my jokes funny? Isn’t it weird how you’re dead now, Jo? You liked my poetry on instagram. It’s so dumb but it meant so much, I couldn’t…you weren’t good with taking kindness in. Is that why it ends so early for us? How much longer do I get, Jo? How silly will I look wriggling?

I don’t think I could feel it if anyone closer died, Jo. It’d go straight in the box. You ease me into it, Jo – thank you. And I knew. I don’t know how, but I knew. I could smell death on you. I was so afraid for you. Oh, Jo. It’s not fair that I wasn’t wrong. It’s not fair you weren’t loved and loved enough to feel satiated. It’s not fair you didn’t feel peace, just wriggled and wriggled and wriggled and stopped. Where did you go? There was so much of you, where did it go? Is it inside me? How silly is that, Jo, my mind can’t be trusted with the perception of men. Titans, worms, whore Zeuses, Adonises, sad, small, Hades, Soft Boys, Orpheus with his lyre and an empty
stadium

The last interaction we have is when I tag you on an insta story with a Blur boyband photo from the 90s, and the music over it goes “KYLIS – kill your local indie soft-boy.” you say, “I like how of all the bands, you associate me with Blur. I mean, I like Blur sometimes…” with 4 dots on your ellipsis (like a middle aged man, Jo).

I write “Ah, it’s so odd. I feel like we both must feel unseen by each other.