A single-page obituary
told me more than you ever did.
I never made the drive,
which perhaps was selfish,
perhaps was simply sensible.
What is blood but life, anyways?
You never even went to war—
just fired rifles into thick Florida air.
Why say elegy instead of eulogy—
perhaps I don’t know enough to
commend
I certainly don’t know
enough to come mend absences;
I deliberated and
then he died.
And so elegy, for I mourn a
myriad of misshapen things:
Mother-love, daughter-love,
baggage at a different platform
entirely and we have to call across
crackling satellite space to coordinate
our grief.
Mine was the last, crackling
voice he heard, and could it
conceivably have been a relief?
Did he/you hold on too long—
what is blood but life, anyways?
Literally speaking, we share none
at all,
yet somehow a thick
rich arterial flow flooded
that stilted call.