Answers to the questions you always wanted to ask the departed:
(A counter poem with answers after Ellen Bass Inquest)https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/inquest-ellen-bass-poem

She loved apricots, not figs.  
Olives reminded her of saltwater,  
and the yellow irises—those were never hers.  

Her feet stayed clean because she refused to walk barefoot,  
never trusted the ground, never trusted much at all.  

She did not cut her hair  
because she liked the weight of it,  
the way it draped across her shoulders  
like something constant.  

The married man was nothing—  
just a name she could never forget.  

She was terrible in the kitchen  
because she never measured,  
because she thought heat would shape things just fine.  

The chickens shat everywhere  
because she let them,  
because she found humor in their mess.  

The fog over the bridge,  
she watched it,  
but never spoke about it,  
never pointed, never sighed.  

She never trusted anyone fully.  
She won raffles because fortune liked her better than she liked herself.  

She sang the same lullaby her mother sang to her—  
a tune no one quite remembers.  

On the floor, waiting,  
she thought about nothing.  
That was the thing she was best at.  

She could never give up kisses,  
never told where she found the chanterelles.  

She left too much behind  
and too little at the same time.

If I was a bird my wings would be clipped by a kid running around with scissors because its parents didn’t really care or shot by a man with a gun because the government doesn’t mind.

If I was a shark I would eat a meal that contained plastic scraps because proper trash disposal wasn’t a thing or get caught in a net and have my fins cut off to be sold on a market full of people who would eat anything they could get their hands on just so they rest of me could be thrown back into the water to rot and waste away.

If I was the sun I would have to exist knowing that people scream at me to burn hotter and brighter or dimmer and colder every second, minute and hour because of the extreme climate they gathered on their own planet.

If I was an angel my halo would be ripped off my head and thrown away like trash or I’d be on earth like every cliché romance plot ever and get shot and dissected by “scientists” who claim to mean good and crave to do bad because there is a reason happy endings only exist in fictional stories.

If I was human I’d be nothing short of disappointed.

Then again we are never good at being anything more than hypocritical.

Aftermath  

The crash happens, and then everything waits.

The tow truck arrives—sleek and gleaming,  
its midnight-black paint absorbing the streetlights  
in a perfect, polished hush.
It is not a wrecker—it is a machine with purpose,  
its curved chassis hugging the ground like a race car—  
the quiet arrogance of a predator.
The hydraulic arm unfolds with practiced precision,  
chrome glinting, not a speck of rust anywhere.

My car, foreign but familiar, hesitates in its wreckage.
A midsize sedan manufactured in a plant  
where workers assembled it with American hands,  
yet its heritage lingers in every curve,  
a design caught between old and new.
Its paint—a muted slate, unassuming—  
shows years of careful touch-ups,  
my own hands smoothing over time and dents itself.
Next to the tow truck, it looks misplaced,  
a junker entered as a joke for the Daytona 500.

The insurance company—AllFarmressive—  
calls twice, their scripted reassurances tumbling  
into contradictions.
"We’ll expedite your claim," they promise,  
but attach an additional note:  
"Due to unforeseen delays,  
processing times may be adjusted  
without prior notice."  
The website insists everything is  
"streamlined and efficient,"  
but each link loops back to the homepage.
Every representative sounds the same,  
pausing at the same beats,  
reading from a script that never quite  
answers the question asked.

The rental car resists.
The screen blinks erratically,  
menus nested inside menus,  
each button press yielding nonsense—  
"Safety Belts Huggings Allowed,"  
"Start Not Start? “  
I jab at the touch screen,  
scrolling through untranslated menus,  
attempting to override locked settings.
Each swipe resets the interface,  
bringing me back to the same blank screen,  
blinking in stubborn refusal.
It moves with a sluggish, uneven pull,  
dragging toward the right,  
forcing me to correct, over and over,  
a silent, insistent opposition.
It does not trust me.
It wants to remind me what happened.

The bumper stays on the sidewalk for three days.
A fractured artifact, curled at one edge,  
its metal warped—something half-melted, half-chewed.
Every dent tells a story,  
some shallow, some deep—  
one an open palm shape,  
another., the edge of a key.
The torn plastic lining exposes the layers beneath,  
each piece folding inward,  
a body returning to itself.
By day four, it is gone.

The streetlights flicker when I drive past.
The pavement hums under my tires,  
a restless, steady vibration.
Somewhere ahead, a distant car horn wails,  
too long, too sharp, disappearing into silence.
The shadows stretch unnaturally in the glow  
of a traffic signal that no longer changes.
Something has shifted.
Something is lingering.

I watch the headlights stretch ahead,  
the road tightens, then vanishes into silence

I know the crash is over,  
but I don’t think it’s done with me.

It's a feeling that I can never
put my finger on,
to seize its power with a name.
It's that slight rhythmic delay
in conversations on the phone,
the footfall of our voices
constantly just out of step.
Moments that are almost inconsequential,
but I keep picking at them
in my mind
like the loose skin of a hangnail.
Thumbing at the thoughts
in a way you tell yourself is harmless.
Just a bit more...
Only in an instant, it's all irrevocably undone.
It's that bitter stone of doubt in your chest
when there's a full stop instead of an "x".
You can't help circling back
to that seed planted in your mind
earlier than you can ever remember,
that it's you - fundamentally,
objectively, intrinsically.
Against your own better judgement,
it's so easy to sink into the ruminations
of inadequacy and psychological self-flagellation.
How many more times must you feel this way?
It's so familiar that you can almost detach.
That every time you feel that sparkle of
human connection, of being wanted for a moment,
it's already waiting for you.
You already know it's inevitable.

Fingertip reaches—rose glass-fractured sky,
but the world keeps turning, indifferent, blind.
We watch, we wait, we sift through the fallen ashes—
searching for warmth in a fire long gone.

Ghosts of wanting drift through the ebb,
feet sinking in time’s marrow-thick river.
Clawing at the hilltop, slipping, gasping—
but do we climb or just fall slower?

Love hums then shatters,
echoes down corridors we dare not tread.
The oaken river swallows its dead,
birds fall southward, wings brittle with regret.

Winter comes for all—darkness too.
Light flickers, just out of reach,
a mirage for the desperate, the reckless,
those who still run, still chase, still bleed.

But what if the answers unravel the mind?
What if understanding breaks us instead?
What if we lose ourselves,
seeking someone else to make us whole?

Is life’s significance just a joke told in passing,
laughter drowned in the howl of the void?
If misery loves company,
why do so many stand alone?

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 and repeat]

We
fit toge
ther seamlessly
like the numbers on
a digital alarm clock,
moving without hesi
tation, from one figure to
the next, a movement of time transi
tioning,  unsettling, unnotica

bly building on and constructing ourselves
within the construction of time
itself. We are the only
static constant, the on
ly reliable source:
time keeps moving
forward, and
so will
we —