Corpses don't harbor hate

He promised me he would never leave,

that as long as the

sky was burning pink in the evening

I would be safe come morning.

but that sunrise sky

was restless, stained as if a pomegranate

split open and spilled across it, and

I thought heaven was trying to get a closer look

at the very thing it lost control of.

That morning I learned

that corpses don’t harbor hate,

that they certainly can’t

foster passion, and pastors

in no way, know the dead of whom they speak

I felt closer to the earth,

Yet further,

as if my gravity loosened.

I was the flower in a lapel,

Adorned, not yet wilting.

I was the pot of church coffee,

Hot through the veins and bland on the tongue

I knew that bodies were fleeting,

that flesh and pigments faded,

but nothing calms this anger,

this rage from recognition

and I set forth,

from your gravestone,

to do all that I could-

which was nothing,

simply nothing at all,

And I trudged on.