Dear Angela,

Dear Angela,

As I’m about to enter your tomb-

Peony and chrysanthemum, not mine, never meant for you

but still I give you red- we all need some red!

I hear your laugh, as it was during life- almost violent,

A frenum-severing laugh, a termite laugh, since

it bores through everything, this stone,

Rolled back to test the strength of this story, but still

You lie there- sunken cheeks and crushed velvet. I guess you were

Beautiful once- your pretty, misshapen beard,

Your lovely split lip- your eyelashes, or what they shielded

Always gave you away. You never were a man- few among us are,

I never have been a man, only a fleeting vision of a boy in the mirror

As I’m about to enter your tomb- i remember those

Liquid looks you used to give us in that clean dust

Glass room, the way you made the trees feel like hallucinations.

The way you drew a crowd of moths. I'll say I don’t

Miss you, but still

Must anoint you for the strangeness, the goddess you were.