I didn’t mean to go extinct. It’s just
yesterday ten thousand squid dried
to paper on the beach, their big eyes
watching the sun wake red on the sea.
And a woman on the bus said a prayer
for two million dead bees — anyone
could tell she really meant it. She held
her hands so tightly together they lost
all their blood, gasped ghost white.
Sometimes a person gets taken over,
wants so much to put the dead back
in the womb that her belly bleeds open.
Whoever finds the scabs below her ribs
will find the hours she rode waves bare
to the shore — for the squid, maybe,
for a woman on the bus. For a host
too small. A skin too often turned red
from light and all its damage, the color
light leaves behind to say Sorry. Never