Look, he’s there, he breathes—
But how, when I have killed him, 
does he still arise? 

He has eaten me like air,
his teeth have stuttered on my bones
the ravages of time.

Call him what he leaves 
behind: a grief as thin as memory,
as chilling and as brief.

It was days before
I felt his death—oh, the lightness
was unbearable relief.

But now the waking heart
breathes there where once the corpse
lay toe-tagged and abandoned.

I begged you on the dusty road
to raise him for my sister’s sake,
but I did not bear in mind my own.