Regarding a corpse
at the bottom of a ravine,
I wonder if it’s mine.
I wonder if as it tumbled,
sinews tearing like tissue
soaked in another’s tears,
it felt my pain. I wonder
if there is relief in not-
feeling, not-being: absence.
I see no headstones, nothing
to mark a life, to reveal who
the corpse belonged to.
Was it held hostage,
a bouquet torn from the branch
bleeding into its vase?
Did it find what it sought
at the bottom of a ravine,
or did it recall, too late,
the dog-eared novel, the unread
poems by the bed—how a body
can leap without falling?
