I was in the shower the other day and I noticed my arm,

so skinny. Is that my arm?

When you were five, the things you laughed at

really were funny.

Want any of my jazz CDs? Want this blazer? Shirts?

When Sidney was having trouble, I’d drink a few beers

in the evening.

I literally had to hold the kid down to keep him

from running out barefoot in the snow.

Louise was calmer, but very wary when they first arrived,

only one-and-a-half.

Needed affection but couldn’t do it forward.

She’d back up into you.

She likes her Juicy Juice.

But still, it was something. You achieved it, right?

You should feel good about that.

When it’s time, Sidney will be the one

to carry me upstairs.

I had all this expensive gold put in my mouth.

Wouldn’t have wasted the money if I’d known.

One good thing: financially, Penelope will be set.

You should feel good about that.

Sometimes I get panic attacks. Horrible feelings of fear,

I don’t know why, but overwhelming.

Anything I can take for that?

Try to keep people in a room

and what happens?

Bones fly.

I tell my friends to “stay safe.”

How do you feel, Mr. Rogers?

As if it were settled.

“But,” said the father, “it won’t be fine.”

So much depends upon distance

whether people are near or far.

I’ve put the world in a box for now

to keep astronauts from leaving.

The day they went off to the moon

I was sad.

Note: Some of the phrasing is borrowed from Virginia Woolf's To the LIghthouse

Everything’s contained even

the ocean but

can ocean slosh or does sloshing

only happen inside a cask or

in stranded vessel taking on water

which is hard to see from shore.

Clouds dusk waves waving (but not sloshing).

The slanted ship sends the abandoned lifeboat back

to the woman in the skirt on the shore her shoes kicked off

but not far enough a wave takes one away.

Isn’t needed

nothing helps.

The outline of the mast can’t advise.

It sank of course.

Dead captain the life of the boat.

Alone at the edgeless waves who might’ve seen her

she walked to the lighthouse shoe in hand

thoughts leaking out of her glasses.

None on the moon

but from the moon oceans can be said to slosh

convexly.

When you get a chance.

A slow, unsteady stream of

   people in cans.

Yellow tarp forms a shape

   restrain me, please.

I forgot. Or on purpose.

   Either way, dreaming

in daylight in a warm trickle

   of people, necks of rubber.

I could lie on the pavement

   all day,

relaxing in the sunshine.

   This woman in heavy fabric,

a big belt, and a handgun,

   working, sweating.

Lights flash in flimsiness where

   years ago

they would instead spin

   inside a glass cylinder.

A sudden gust flaps the yellow.

She speaks with the coroner,

   a genius isn’t needed.

It’ll take just a moment

   or a short hour.

I won’t say goodbye,

   just so long.