Today my uncle gave me the death I always wanted.
He touched me with a couple needles
and my arms went to the bed
and my legs felt like they went deeper
into the ground two stories below.
I noticed half my life was floating
in cotton. Almost all of life is floating
if you count the air beneath floors
or the tar above earth.
For a moment my nose
had to deal with so much violence
just there, in the air trying to reach me,
that there was no time to think my violent thoughts.
And my uncle sat in a chair by the bed
and thought tenderly of me–he didn’t ask me to think,
to keep thinking. But there will be a next death.
You can’t hold a cut shut.
You can’t stitch a heart into beating.
Why can’t everyone be more like uncle?
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