Lessons in Death 

I.

It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon

The kind cats look forward to

And me and my cousin, Goody-Two-Shoes

Run ‘round the porch till our heads 

spin dizzy with [egg vomit] 

His father, Mr. Mustache Man

Chuckles at us for being eight 

He is cleaning his rifle with a dirty rag 

While me and Goody-Two-Shoes stare in awe 

Want to try? 

A machine is a machine

which is basically a toy

And me and Goody-Two-Shoes have played enough boy games

to understand this is fun, he aims first 

while I roll a small bullet between the palms of my hand 

and I think this is the first time I am struck by death

I ring my finger round the old-rusted trigger 

Slipping on like a wedding band, wobbling because 

I have never held anything so heavy before 

I don’t expect much, but then again no one does

So I aim with the the direction and might of a 

determined, mouthless girl 

This is when I learned we all die in stillness

II.

I see the same when I find my old hamster, a trickster, a bishop chewer 

Wedged between a weight and a wall

fright on his face

blood on his chin

a string where a fourth leg (would be)

I take my old three-legged hamster into my arms

And ask if maybe he’d prefer to be free 

But he wriggles and wretches and screeches at me

in the way all rodents are born 

III.

If Mrs. Lewinsky is right—that nothing has been created or destroyed, 

then I will meet you after gym class with a box of apple juice 

Because you have been a child and myself a tadpole

Because you have been my mother and myself a loci 

Because what was meant to burn is destined to erupt 

I stand in the shallow-end and wonder if it is the 

Great flooding which rinsed the dry earth clean

If a Cambrian creature lives inside me and 

Wishes to parish at the mere sight of modernity 

If I believe in covalence, in persisting and proving

And able to break 

I can not ask to many questions, I have not heard all the answers

I can not ask to many questions, I can only hold your head to my chest,

trace my fingers on your back and carry you to the pull-out sofa bed 

You say this is what dying must feel like 

IV.

If I am matter and energy and electricity and chemicals

If I am stardust and karma, a crustacean or fate 

Then my body is a boiling flask and grief a flame 

I did a crayon drawing of a room called limbo 

Scrawled strokes rippling through time and space

At the end of the day

There is nothing more I could take

Than to love and be loved 

And to let sacred wisdom 

Rise above it 

V.

Because I know what I was never supposed to know: 

That I know stillness but I have never known peace