dear

A vet's four Vietnams harbor under sleeves. Mission oils occupy my museum wing. Old sofa's cat-scratched and starting defenselessness over with a loose-weave slipcover. It submits to cricks and tucks. Childhood lashing lasts as folk art, palm-prints passed down young behinds. Paramours romp the...

Then when the flame forked like a sudden path I gasped and stumbled, and was less. Density pulsing upward, gauze of ash, Dear light along the way to nothingness, What could be made of you but light, and this?