Packages

(featured in my new book available at https://rathaus.press/shop)

PACKAGES

You told me
when we were walking
about the gifts
you had given your mother
to tug her back into knowing. You told me
you would find them
months later
wrapped and boxed,
piled on a shelf
in her closet. Now
your body is on its way
back to where you’re from

to be
burned in a fire and turned
to ash,
to be kept
on a shelf in your mother’s house. Grief is a trap door for comprehension: she forgets, she calls your last boyfriend to tell him

she is sending you puzzles

in the mail, only
to have him tell her

again, you’re gone.