Dear Thanatos,
–Traci Brimhall

I am three thoughts away from the grave,
two steps away from the open door,
one kiss away from the bridge.

Dear volcano, where are you?

Dear battleship, your war planes
sit on the bottom of the sea,
eels coiled in the cockpits.

Dear moon, you were an accident.

Dear second heartbeat I’m relieved
you left my body before I could choose.

Dear ghost, leave my attic, crawl
down the drainpipe to the ditch,
to the tunnels beneath the city.

Haunt the rats. Sleep in their bones.

Dear bruise, I promise.
Dear fossil, I am sorry for the light.

 

Photo by Aaron Thomas on Unsplash

Aubade as Fuel

–Traci Brimhall

Your lip an abstraction of iris always arousing
the question of the bed. Which goodbye lasts?
Only yesterday my hands rich with dirt. I told you
Milkweed is my new salvation addiction. You know
I always need to save something, to control it.
I can make a pollen island, make your collarbone
a spiritual landscape, the air around us orange
and alive. The shape you left in the sheets
a Rorschach I read as a rattlesnake’s skeleton
in the silverware drawer, no, a fire in a cabin,
no, a cabin on fire, the absence it will make.
But look at me now, my heat signature a whole
bouquet of howling, straddling scarves of smoke.