Despair needles you with its whisper,
it is agnostic, it believes in irony1,
like a flys buzz it is perceptions, a busy
blood clot2 that says alive, alive.
Im not the sTOPped motion, the straight line out.
Your garlands are convivial3, festival, sacrificial,
nuptual, honorary, funebrial.
That spring, when we strolled in the rain,
you bent4 to the stone walls alyssum
bloom, stem, and root, you tore a handful free.
Against your mouth the petals5
were a mass of stars winking6 out.