Assemble the parts that came with your childhood. There should be a king snake, an old man from Mumbai, a cigar box; cruelty, yours.
When someone calls him a fur baby,
strip down to your underwear in the snow.
Scream silently.
Place your iPhone in a bag of rice. Leave it on the dresser overnight. This should draw out the 2,834 photos of Liam kneading your chest. Dispose of the bag properly.
Remember being broke, December at the Walsenburg truck stop, the trailer rocking between long-haul semis three hundred and sixty-three miles from home? How he slept in the crook of your arm.
Forget that one. If it doesn’t work, wait thirty seconds. Try again.
Our bay foal last month, his leg hanging useless, the deputy called from the canteen. The cartridge that killed summer. This wasn’t that.
If you have them handy, collect the perfect head of a hummingbird, the tansy-aster gone to seed, Cassiopeia’s flaming star. A shadow moving across the shortgrass.
Tie them together with hemp string. Place them on his grave. No one will know.
Too bleak and beautiful 