I thought you knew that moments like this would undo you.
That the wound would open before the close,
that today I would see a homeless man playing the violin backwards
and only be reminded of how the music, like water,
slipped through my backbone and threaded out through my mouth
the same way you did the first time our bodies came together.
That it wasn’t a coming but more of a going.
Evolution has prepared me for loss: disappearance of whole bones
at a time, erasure of two extra ribs, no more hands.
I am ready, but my smile like a chandelier keeps falling down.
I was taught by the best to figure out how to deal with losing you:
my skin cells, shedding at the rate of thousands per day,
each one going with a single memory of you.
I thought you knew that in my dreams the fireflies always
soften my fall, down and down into piles of their wings and light,
buried by insects that already understand
how to act alive when their entire bodies feel dark.
This is how I feel without you
but I am trying to learn.