Recall the moment I mistook
the falling snow outside for a cloud of swarming
flies: midnight, a late March flurry

 

swirling in a shaft of light, until the light
darkened in the silence of early spring.
Almost wholly inward, dead

 

to the world like that fresh corpse
that was actually a pile of black
trash bags. Crows circling above:

 

a dread omen, but not really.

Nature behaves correctly but is probably

unfortunate. I tell myself,

 

losing you was like losing a part of my body.
I tell myself, stop being stupid. Somewhere off
a mountain highway I’m trying to decide

 

which soda to get, and I pick the cherry one,

and I’m living a virtuous life.
Somewhere off a Florida highway anyone can buy a dead

 

baby shark preserved in blue formaldehyde
or a cross made of seashells.
We exist as limbs

 

of the whole, not as mere pieces.
Losing you was like losing a part of my body.
I suck at an orange slice, burn a cut on my lip.