“de Trop” is a response to suicide and brings into question the role of others in the demise of the deceased. This poem reveals inevitable feelings of guilt, shock, and the questioning of the final act.
You imagined the freedom of your exit
in the shower, alone in bed, in small isolations
where no amount of love could tether you.
It was well rehearsed.
Come back.
Your sister’s kids are growing up. The height chart
on the wall measures the distance. Four inches
since you dropped from the branch.
Time grows in lengths of limbs like miles.
I’ll never know more about your mother,
only that she starved you all the way to the library.
You checked out all the wild plant books,
because that’s all there was to eat.
You’ll never have to tell me again about
your father’s haunting in your childhood room
This is the farthest from you he will ever be.
Is it far enough?
I miss your incessant smoking, I long to listen to your cough.
Because I need to know the name of the weeds that grow
from cracks in my walkway, I keep forgetting all the names.
I don’t have anyone to ask.
I want you to paint me again, with death looming behind you
flowers bursting from my head in impending decomposition,
mushroom skin. Make me fertile dirt again,
I am less afraid.
Come back.
I’ll burn the words I said when I said you were too much—
swap their fine, white ash for yours. Come back so I can
take the rope away or cut you down in time. Rub your neck and say
There, there. It’s only rope-burn, not goodbye.
Leave a Reply