Calm down. We have a procedure for this.
Mom enters, stops all the motions of life,
She says, please sit.
And as animal near a trap, we know it exists;
We prime prayers for untimely flight from our lips.
Mom opens herself up with a gesture, hands on her hips,
her shoulders pull forward as she pulls back,
as if to exert control, but I know
in this fight, control is the last place you want to go.
Hands on her hips, but her shoulders are shaking.
She says,
Someone else is dying,
dying so fast, in your heads she’ll be buried
and we’ll be mourning her until her last breath.
It’s a truth that you take like a bullet train to the chest.
Now all we can do is pray,
Because God grants miracles every day.
But not to us, never to us. We need to learn
We’ve always crammed for this test.

Head down, I have to focus on small things—
The tightly packed cork-screw-plastic carpet, how it projects our movements and how, beneath my feet, people seldom go. I wonder if all this weight I feel will make it look like we walk here more—

I have to focus on every small thing—
I roll a slip of paper between thumb and forefinger. I wind it up into a tight ball, pressing so hard it should bleed. I surprise myself by hurting it so gently. Nationally composed, but every time she makes her exaltations to God, the smaller things are torn to pieces and a tightly-bound snow falls on the betraying carpet. I breathe—

On the surface, I am faceless.
But from the other side of that broken place in my chest,
I’m screaming.

DEATH MAKES CHILDREN OF US ALL.
And I’m the girl who never wants to grow up,
who wants to remain wrapped in the warm blanket
of a parent’s embrace. Forever.
You can’t make me a child, Death!
Because I never left!
I’m still caught somewhere between believing
And forgetting to eat because I’m absorbed in a book
And drowning in the fountain of youth.
Before, I used to know
that the only proper end to a good life
was a good death,
and of course that was before
all these people started dying
in front of me.

All I can remember was the way grandpa’s fingers undulated
Involuntarily across the bedspread and how he
Declared so fervently, so frequently
That he wanted to go home—
Please, let him go home—
That it became my new religion.
I bear my tears silently, and silently I cry
Mommy. Mommy, I want to go home,
Please, let’s go home.
because I cannot face another one.

She releases us
We thunder up the stairs.
We preserve that teenage spirit
Questions now, not prayers
Wordless, crumbling
on our lips.
Why do people have to die,

Why do we have a procedure
for this?