Life might be different had you / listened to what the doctor’s said: “take your meds.”/ But you don’t listen to the ones you love most, / So why hear out the ones you can’t stand?

They declared me alive at 7:59, a minute before / policy promises another night, another shift of / nurses sweeping by, more IV and trays for you. / Instead, they said Take care, don’t let him die…

Lightning bugs are endangered / They weren’t when we were three / Or maybe they were and we / Caught them anyway…

My cousin called me / girly and I've been scared / of him since. Six plus / years my junior.

My mother swooned at my reading the backs of cereal boxes at breakfast: riboflavin, acetate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, niacinamide, calcium bicarbonate…

When I first move to Flint, my house is / sandwiched between the two other Asians in the city: / the old Thai woman and the half Japanese man.

creation as combat or else all consumed when / looking to be discovered i became invisible.

I let the bird tell me what it wants to be compared to because it is still alive, still tending toward things.

YOU. You are a stout full-stop, planted squarely in the middle of my life. Time is turning you into an ellipsis, as it lugs me onward like the proverbial sack of potatoes.

i am the one who doesn’t trust you. / the world: a thin & narrow strip / across my darkness.

My sister arrived in a dream. / I was Judith coming home after conquering Holofernes / and there was some cheese left in my basket, / only a little blood speckled the cloth.

Ron is moving to Houston but spends the day helping me move furniture that won't fit in the death closet.

…to give my voice to a woman / who takes my name & date // of birth to access the two / prescriptions waiting for me

i bleed purple but only when i try to / the sunshine, helium and hydrogen sun spots / i remember how to combust like i did as a child

sweetie, who are u to question a man / that works? pulls back the sheets, / lifts the stiff board of his body / out of bed, peels off his clothes / & dresses himself daily.

candles lit / on new years floors / in the old house where the doors / never quite shut.

All day the fat flakes fall but do not stick. / The daffodils bend their stems, spill their golden cups.

Fourteen years today I love you so much even / more than dying out of such a world a love / ​beyond a severed barbwire fence a vein / rusted shut

And sometimes I am sorry when the mothers / pass by my window on their way to the park, / young ones on their hips or in their carts

AfterHeSwallowedUsWeWereAllTogetherWetAndStickyInsideMyFather'sGut