❝ living will ❞

[litany]

you will want to die
more than once, more
than many onces until
once goes mythical
like easy days and
      love smoothing your
      hair back when you're
   sick when you can't
           breathe when it's
                                   everything you can do
to fold.

you will hate people
founded and unfounded
  blistering years or
  hectic seconds, flashes
of the "I" most of us
keep in check since
to let it out is too
high stakes even for
an addict, even for an
                      emergency bleeding out
         your eyes at strangers.

you will panic
quiet
loud
an explosion on mute,
cutting before the
        dust remembers how
to settle, before
        you remember
how to save yourself
with lies and
subtle objectivity.

you will read a book
watch a movie
listen to a song
feel a hand
and then you will
          have to
    take them with you
all of them
           shy of baggage but
still heavy, still
yours.

you will find yourself
lost looking for
nameless countries
people and probably
comfort, the search
       aching its distance
                                under the skin
as natural as
any other part of you -
         natural as any part
of anyone.

you will want to die
you will hate people
you will panic
you will
read watch listen feel take
you will lose
and find
and then
if you're lucky
if you're breathing
you will know

what no one else
can know for you:
which touch of
sound or color
which punch of
dreams or air
which cinched sky
or encaged earth
swallows you whole,
scrapes what's
somehow still there,
and takes it
     right into danger
       into the light
       lays it out
       and says,
          "yes" "stay" "love"

the good parts are you too,
(no yes no yes no yes no and so on)
buried. it's not a shovel
you want anyway though
is it.
open your hand.
i (you) know
just
what i (you) need.

eleven dead flowers, blown into the ground
for when your children sit alone and
know none of this. roots where roots will
have the most trouble. a house built by
a you who never lifted a hammer in all her life.
but love still. mangrove born, sea forest
where feeling nests as its own story, time told
like a compass often broken and always
inarticulate - as is its wont.
they won't know.
and you can't tell them.
so flowers. so roots.
so sunlight: necessity.
so moonlight: exhale.
so.

so you will need to
remember this
for later
  when you can't believe a word of it.
  write it and it burns
                    so hold it under your tongue instead.
               press it down. then curl, and swallow
in return.