After Hernan Bas’ At the root of his thinking (or the pink blossom)

I overdress to be outdoors. Pork pie. Right-handed buttons. Black tie slack lined down my chest. Nobody has died, but somebody has died. & I want to remember her name so I can swiss army carve it into bark, so I can say a word above her grave, set deep and bellied in an uprooted tree. White birch, genderless swatch, sloughing to pinkraw. Roots reach for sky—tongues still try to catch rain. I know half of what it means to die slowly. To feel specific thirst. If this is a rural funeral, I’ll turn the sunflowers to lampposts, the mountain to a procession of wrecked black cars, wet pine metallic, rubber burning. I’ll turn my hands urban, my body man. My wallet will brim with opposites, a prayer card with a girl’s name, psalm I’ll feel in what’s left of my womb. What is it to visit your own grave? To die & be more alive than ever? I want to tell me I miss me. I want to tell me, I’m never coming back.