Because We Never Practiced With The Escape…

we had to read the instructions as we sank.

In a hand like carded lace. Not nuclear warheads

on the sea's floor nor the violet flow over the reactor

will outlive this sorrowful rhyme. Vain halo! My project

becalmed, I'll find I've built a monument

more passing than a breeze. It will cost us,

Pobrecito. We can't buy a prayer. Did you call

my name or was that the floorboard

wheezing? These memories won't get any bigger,

will they? I think something is coming that will

vastly improve our quietude. I'm growing

snow crystals from vapor in anticipation and praying

for the velvet-cushioned kneeler that I need to pray.

I made this little sound for you to wait in.

Source: Barely Composed (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015)