DEAR DEVONTE HART

I imagine your ghost as thinand dark as your body claspedaround the armor of the officer who perhapsin another two seconds might have pepperedyour flesh withyour form with the sharp sting of voltagelifted his arms and squeezedthe life from your lungseither way you are lifeless nowand I cannot stop seeing youreaching from harm to harmtears cutting a path downaround your nose and cheekas if a streamon the face of a mountainand the snow was melting—sweet boy—how high the pitchand steep the frequencyof your sufferingin my dreams you never survive the frostbut in death walk slowly along the gravelof a slender winding roadup the side of the sierrathough weightless the earth shiftsbeneath your feetin acknowledgement of your matterof how you make the ground holy—hosanna sweet boy hosanna—you are ascending the mountainthe jet of your skin iridescentbeneath the sun’s heat your eyesturned upwards to count the veinsin the tree leaves the birds in their neststhe beetles black and buzzingthrough the branchesalong the path flowers lift their facesin greeting and you joke with them like sistersfull sated lush—at the bend in the road you look downthe cliffside to the spacewhere the van would beyou don’t stop to look for brake marksor signs of strugglethere are no surprises hereno uncertainty of what this wasonly what was and in death isno longeryou descend through the brushand collect the bonesof your siblingsgather them like an artista benevolent god—all praises—you lay out their skeletonsjoining the joints with daisiesso enamored with your workyou don’t notice themwhen they comeyour brothers and sisterssoundless through mulchtheir spirits all glimmer and shinethough a canopy overheadyou grasp each other’s handsand without want or shadowyou meander slowlytoward eden