The summer you died I kept sleeping
on that sunbonnet quilt, legs stretched
on blue squares stitched by hands
with the same line maps as my own.
For weeks that room held me looking
at how light displaces itself in the early
morning before the house wakes its ghosts
with the smell of cheap espresso, how a
dresser sits in dust for years then one day
becomes a place for us to set the moving
on—a place for all our unloved, unessential
toiletries. But there are things I need to tell
you, Alice. I need to tell you how, when you
died, you still gave me fleas. How my skin
reddened and hollowed and I scratched
so hard I made myself bleed, how the doctor
said rash, how my mother said parasite,
how I said love, how I watched people swim
drunk at the lake, bodies hovering like moons
against licorice sky, how I scaled the fallen
tree like a tightrope, how I learned our love
has two mouths: one that draws blood
and one that drinks it.