You said, ‘write me a poem,’ so I draw breath and tap the quill to my vein but find it dry.
The doctor took vials last Wednesday, looking for that which will tell him nothing.
It’s not that easy, my soul moves just beneath the flesh, a specter, a rolling vein.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
My nose is red,
How about you?

Mouth on long fingers, she smiled around them
Brightly, silently new, in need her soul whispered,
Laughing like water on the breeze coming off the lake
The simplicity of existing overcame her and the fathomless
Depths of mind blew in the wake, a lightness of being interrupting id.
She was pleased as the taste of sun and salt and skin became her without guile.
Calm and cool she thrills, asking for a brief interlude of indeterminate depth and duration.

Be happy the dead men called. Yes, Robert, if I could live my life for you, but
I have become instead, from hasty shades of dullard gray the immense and burning sun.
Daddy said it’s his lot. He sat with his grandparents and parents and sister and son, and others as they lay still, passing. Yes, Daddy, same as it’s mine to be pillars of the earth.