death, how many more good soul will you take?
(for Jude)
every equation is an imbalanced riddle at the middle of a game.
i slice my throat every night to know how much
beads of blood drop, how dark, how potent its magic is, each time a poet dies.
a girl will tap me at the back. her pronunciation of suicide
is a bullet shot at a boy in the cold — faint and innocent.
i am assuming a bat for a raven — one as a garden with roses, the other, a
collection of thorns in a gallery of bones.
death will come, but sometimes, without pity,
without an array of light.
this burn does its best to torture my feet, to paint my face with the
fist of its palm. death, do you
even imagine how much tears you’ve drained? are you thirsty?
are the worms in your stomach not tired of being overfed?
Maami will invoke the names of her mothers, and there will be a consensus on your government.
today, or tomorrow, you will also be seeing your own death
by the spirits of the souls you’ve sieved.