flay any one of us and you’ll get
roughly 18 square feet of skin
to do with what you want

as we will be dead
it will not matter then
how you treat it

but until then
we get to decide
how to live in it

this lump of mine
still moves according to plan
but any thought it might have had
is long gone

what did my heart think about
back when it still could

for so long i couldn’t recall
and so had given up trying
— although there have been times
when i have had a glimpse of some motion
(breeze in a poplar
a skirt wrapping around a leg in mid stride
tears trickling on a man’s hard cheek)
and my mind has called up
what i thought was only
a poltergeist ache —

it always seemed to settle in my chest
but only because I thought
atrophy had made room for it

but now
even when I still cannot easily believe
in a lazarus dawn

there is something
I cannot deny

that comes early in the morning
when I turn toward the breath beside me
something directed outward
something that thinks it ought to be
visible to all

a knocking in the tomb