m+i+n+i+m

• 1: Where’d you put it?
• 2: Put what?
• 1: You know what I mean.
• 2: I have no idea what you mean!
• 1: You know, it was mine.
• 2: What was?
• 1: What you hid?
• 2: How can I hide something I don’t know? I’ve hidden nothing.
• 1: So everything’s visible?
• 2: What?
• 1: So, there are no secrets, no subterfuges, no items slipped under a cushion until I accidentally find them?
• 2: Here?
• 1: Anywhere.
• 2: How are these questions?
• 1: Maybe because you can hear the rising of my voice at the end of them.

Many people and many oceans I have crossed

to arrive, my love, here at this grim burial

that I might give this last gift to you for death,

to waste a few words for these empty cinders,

since earth itself has taken from me your flesh

and you are lost wrongly from me again, and ever,

still I offer these small words to you in keeping

with the signs and stones we leave upon burials

covered all with a lover’s tears for you to take

as things given in perpetuum, endless farewell.