Sometimes you arrive at the party too late, and everyone
already packed up, kissed cheeks goodbye, vanished
into tomorrow, and you have only begun to disappear.
Sometimes you swallow the entire existence of earth,
billions of years to digest, and the dinosaurs look
like eels from this distance, small wriggly things.
Sometimes you paint the ceiling to look like a head-on collision.
But don’t stop there. You know we’ve only just started
by the way the mariachi music is all guitar, low horns;
you know that skin is only the surface, that we are all fine
bones and lace. Falling from grace is more than just cliché.
The tumors, all benign. The porch steps rot right
below your feet. You can smell the wet wood like mushrooms
growing between skin and bone, and no one is here
anymore. They’ve left, packed up, kissed our ghosts
goodbye, watched them swim, palm to palm.
