after Gwendolyn Brooks
We called it a death, but
it was as much a birth, his
gone an opening, a flavor, like a mouth
discovering the taste of smoke. She would
become herself not
molded to an us, go
brow-deep into the thick of alone. Away
from the world, she bogged, mired, and
grew soft on beige foods. Neither
hungry nor satisfied, she would
eat, cry, binge-watch Survivor—the
irony, her meta rebellion—decapitated
future unspooling its ball of yarn. No exclamation...
more ellipsis, em-dash—no points
to aim toward, connect A to B—in
that open space, that
time of nothing next, she sank into other,
better, more: ample woman’s
body—flint-sharp, fuck-all eyes.