Past Lives

On Monday night in the real world

Illegitimate cigarette smoke 

Curls into commas,

The stars are shaped 

Like a question mark.

My mind orbs

Into elsewhere. I stumble upon 

Six things sat in symbiosis,

Synced breath that slow 

Pulse of an old heart.

Twelve twinkling mirrors 

Or a dozen eyes

Glimmering 

A recognition

All of us understand

Entirely. Go to heaven

And death will still be small talk.

The moth recalls its heat lamp fate

As a slow dance with the sun.

The man remembers something

Smiling in the barrel of his gun.

The bird reinvents its body 

As origami under the car.

The dog and deer and rabbit

Go on and I am wondering how far

You have to move from a memory

Until it makes a new habitat

In these sweet spots.

I am all the way in heaven

Still thinking about it. 

A dozen eyes glitter

In morbidity

Of whataboutyou.

Oh. Oh no.

I’m alive. I laugh

With the dead thing wedged

In my throat. 

A cloud absorbs

The question mark.