Every Pot Looks Like an Urn

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In this light. I’ve been scooping the mold

off my waterlogged snake plant

and replacing it with cinnamon.

The leaves detach, soft

like yellow balloons. I’m not used to

tending something so unwanting

of me. How many balloons can you

count in a hospital? How many

funeral plants have you killed?

My succulent in its nursery pot,

the pinkest leaves already shriveled off.

I reach for a small sponge

on a white dowel that isn’t

there. A haze casts itself

on the formless space.

The succulent turns

to the window, the snake

plant droops in all directions.

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Apparition

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This time, she is

alive, pulling secret

film from a slot.

I like that negative

best, the one

at the top. She looks

as I’ve never seen her,

a glossy pill.

I feel a guilty thing.

A praying

mantis appears

in my foyer. You

are always appearing.

The insect, an abscess,

a bat on my ledge

curled like a lost sock

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Bat no. 1

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A bat flies into my apartment while

I’m awake and you’re alive. Another

while I’m asleep and you are dead.

While you’re dying I keep telling you

the same stories. I know there are more and

better ones. I try to write you a letter.

I struggle in doing without generating.

I stay up for days to give boluses of morphine.

I’m surprised you let me watch you die.

I’ve been reading your diary. I stole it

while you were in the hospital. In there, letters

to your dead dad and therapist. My therapist talks a lot

about integrating the grief, but I cannot bear

to take anything else inside me.

I stop eating. My body retaliates

and I shit the bed in your empty house.

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