i fear
that folded
slip with my
father’s stages
chronicled
in fading
script and
quiet list
of my
mother’s
final
condiments,
whatever
might make
death taste
less bitter
i don’t
want grief
to tear
anything
our parting
should be
like clouds
drifting in
shear
soft and
undramatic.

In my
deepest
slumber
i do
   prohibited
things
crawl
through
the soft
dark,
a thud
inside
your
organs
they
  begin to
squirm
i leave
no
language
just
presence
upon
awakening
a twitch
in the
thigh,
salt
on the
tongue,
heat
trapped
between
joints
somewhere,
you shift.
somewhere,
i remain.

No one
drowns
in their
own
waters.
Fish
don’t.
How
could
you?

Its skin streaked
with rain and soil,
bows beneath
just a few drops
of water
grateful for even
that small sip.
Its stem,
a little bent,
its face
still golden.
And in that
gesture,
I saw the
grace of
needing little
   but receiving fully.

I often break the
dough mid-flap.
it becomes prey
to the oil,
which stares at it
with cat-like eyes.
first, it burns
the part that
is torn and
undefined,
thinned too
much by a
distracted
thought.
And in that
moment,
when
the round
should

have held
its form,
I flinch
at the
supreme
domestic
undoing not
because the
roti broke,
but because
I did again
beneath the
weight
of
something
so simple,
so expected
to be perfect.

Sometimes
out of purpose,
Sometimes
out of love,
Sometimes
out of necessity,
Sometimes
for a reason,
Sometimes
accidentally,
We make
someone happy.
And in those
quiet moments,
we feel
most human.

When I force frozen
meat apart before
it’s had time to thaw
it injures and tears
where the ice clings
too tightly.
  The meat no longer
whole, scatters into
broken bones and
bleeding fragments.
  Your absence undoes
me like this not all at
once, but with a quiet
rip, where we once
held each other too
close to separate
  without breaking.