Standing next to the river releasing a net of milkweed
lilies in the gully
a warm november

These are stand-ins for love
longing
the fag hole

This is a veil
a door knob
a mountain top

My ear is pressed and listening
of these things we would out number them

We’re staying in abstraction here
— we’re staying in the picture of a body from the inside.

I remember you listing off names of flowers, 
eloquently performing your poetic self 

and then falling to tears, 

knowing that behind those petals 
rose a full remembrance of your mother, 
wreathed in the words that cut you.

This is having a body

The form that knows its shape