Bury me in the decomposing carcass of a star.
First, kiss me in illuminated effervescent moonlight
to remind me who I’ve been and where.
Kiss fingertips held hampered arthritic.
Bury me whole. (Powdery white cochineals crushed
rubricate restless memories never archived, transient as I.
Yet, one never expected these things not to be.)
Bury me in the hole made by the decomposing carcass of a star.
Kiss me in the end for the wisdom of my failures.
Cradle my face in your hand; run your thumb
lightly over my cheek; see if there is an entire life in my eyes
before you velvet your lips across my sometimes too earnest face.
Then let my blood run thin on the loom.
Or let the weft redden the warped white bones.
Shuttle my sanguine self
over the skeleton racked in the fray.
We’ve lost what’s been lived. It was cruel
to make us believe otherwise.
Let the world inhale all my breaths.
With them, words. Kiss me
before the light goes dim, before the blood is drained;
gently, before the fabric of this tent bloats, stretched too tight, -
while I live.
Quickly now, bury my bones in the dirt of a burned out star.
