dying, your father is
dead. The bed pan in the corner
collects dust and dirty pennies.
We are seventeen --

the world is so fictionless,
algae blooms clot the backyard pond
your father built in a bout
of alcoholic insight. It's July,

season of drought and delinquency,
the month with the most amputations.
Your fingers flirt with a yellow strand
of frayed sunlight on your ankle

as I try to coax your tears into my hand,
then maybe the smooth stones of your hips.
I imagine your mother's last breath
fleeing the box car of her body --

how afterwards, my breath will be the bible
you turn to. Outside, a tire fire burns
a veil of film noir nostalgia: the sky
a concrete lesson in synaesthesia

for your asthma. Waiting for your sorrow
and your summer dress to unravel
in my hands, I look up benign, malignant,
metastasize. I thought my devotion

would short out the lamps in your room,
leaving us alone in the handmade dark,
where finally, I could give up this kiss,
this tourniquet, this counterfeit cure.