I asked the seasons how change feels and they said it hurts like hell.
I asked my walls how it felt to see you naked and they told me
it felt like you’d never left and your ankles were the most beautiful thing
they’d ever snagged a glimpse of from behind the curtains.
I asked the old man down at the dock sitting beside a fishing pole
that never catches anything what it was like to be alone
and learned that even my calendar wants to take a day off sometimes.
Wherever you are now I hope God or Satan or the tooth fairy
has been good to you in the afterlife and sometimes
I pull out your baby teeth just to remind myself that there is evidence
of your living, that there is proof your feet made prints in the dust,
that even your eye teeth look like letting go.
Your loss tastes like an archaeologist’s dig in my mouth.
You seem like you lived so long ago in the time of the dinosaurs.
If I close my eyes I can still hear your bruises introducing themselves
to me one by one. The only problem is that I never had enough hands
to shake them all by the shoulders, rattle them until they spat out
your reasons why. I wish you’d grown up to be happy,
instead of jumping out a window.
So I asked my physics professor what happens to a falling object
when it hits the ground. He said sometimes the lungs are punctured
by the ribs first, but sometimes the ribs spike through the heart
like a meat skewer and cut of all blood flow immediately.
He said either way was dangerous. I told him loving you was worse.
I asked you in a dream why you left and you said
you were surprised I even heard the door close.
I asked the lone bluebird why it cries and wails at night;
it whispered that the stars are so beautiful in the dark.
I hope you saw them on the way down.