Originally published by The Hallowzine Issue 2.

I didn’t mean to leave, she says

after she is dead and body burnt.

But leave she did, and all that survives

her is a corpse of poems with limbs

cold, and a whisper that floats

just behind my ear, an occasional

tickle on my neck, a probing in my gut,

lodged like a thick wedge of sirloin steak

in my esophagus, that wrinkled, nagging

blockage of blood flow, of lethargy, the

inability to swallow. Did she know? they ask,

and I shrug as if it doesn’t weigh on me

like an equine hoof on my chest, pinning

me in place, shackled, tethered to her secrets.

Was it her choice, to go this way,

to forbid me the opportunity to fix

her, heal her, protect her organs from

crumbling into white ash?