Your slow emergency charts the trajectory
	of the body’s pain, that rowdy incumbent.
Tell me, retired child of the twisted south,
	is my sympathy butting in? Sitting silent
kills me so I have a posthumous peptalk
	with my slain self—my lips are a snagged
zipper, surgical glue in a weeping wound
	so someone else’s story is never scraped
from my own mouth. Soundless, I summon
	absence, summon summer, summon planets
out of alignment—I pray the universe’s
	growing cruelty has been sated. Little Atlas,
holding up your world all on your own,
	serving the sky’s blank verdict—I wish you
release. I wish you the strength to say new year,
	new me mid-July and mean it. May your joy
grow as long as your hair and never be cut
	short. They tried to plant nasty seeds in you,
but we don’t need anything strong as cyanide
	to stifle the weeds. Your body could never be
an unholy thing. Because the sky is the color
	of hospital scrubs and I walked you safely home.