Last Year
I watched you hold a peach
in your hands, smoothing its
boyhood fuzz with your tender palms.
I couldn’t help but think
how you weighed the world’s worth before
taking a knife to its core.

This Year
I watched you write eulogies
in your head. Brother, dead
sometime in the
murky future. You reached those same
fingers, all soft skin and destiny lines
into the unknown, grasping for
an adjective (or two) to sum up
the man you measured against a foreign doorframe.

Next Year
I’ll let you dig a grave and sit in it.
I’ll lead the mourners
as we bury you in peach pits, a
cyanide blanket. The weight of the world
crushing you until you become
one
with the skeletons of your family crypt.

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