Dayton

Is a widow gone mad.
Frozen and rusted, speaking to herself
In overrun parking lots
Crumbling as they rifle through
Her moth ridden pickets.
She mumbles what she sees, the sure thing
Her life should have been. He didn’t die
He left her which for her
Is worse than death. She squeezes herself
Into the dress she fit when they were married
It is stained and does not fit
It will never be back in season
But
She is convinced he will return to her. So she waits
A mad woman staring unblinking into the past.
In another universe I am tangled in her,
the cord wrapped around my neck
And my living and dying exposed under the decaying bits of her.
I am standing in line with the only shoes I own
Hungry and tired and a ruined piece of
A rusted assembly.
In that universe she never left and we withered
Together a perfect family of the undead.
In this universe I lock the doors as I pass through,
I turn my eyes away and hold my breath until we have gone and she cannot catch me—
For what if the familial call is too great
And the cord was not cut, only stretched and
By returning she remembers that I got away from her
And she stretches her claws and draws me in
And pierces me and drains me of all will to be
And I suffocate under the weight of her but do not die
And instead take my place in the gray
beneath her and stand sentinel over the decay
and wait for death to find me.

the big bang

we began as light and then we expanded and all space

belonged to us. We became more and pieces of us divided

over and again but we were drawn together and pulled apart

chaos and entropy and in the midst we named ourselves

The moment we settled it to our lips it was gone and we were past

the entirety of time stands between who we were then

who we are now. perhaps somewhere in the space

where time is too distant and unaffected by our distance

we are still light and we have not expanded and nothing has come between us

but potential.