.png)
The packets came to County Receiving
in carbon sleeves of toe tags,
blue-black flakes sweating backward
through names no kin had claimed.
Bell, night clerk, shaved each syllable
with a postmortem razor, folded six
in pharmacy paper. Called them altitude,
truth stripped for weighing.
Beneath the price, a lock was printed
to keep one life one life:
Keep flesh in flesh; keep sky outside.
Let no door open for the dead.
We swallowed with flat orange soda.
The room did not grow. The inch broke rank
and showed its inward miles. One fly,
washing its hands on the lamp, endured
three ice ages between each stroke.
All hours struck. None was now.
Behind the plaster,
vast pressures flowered without space;
each locked drawer ran farther than the earth,
each body only the near, cut surface
of a fall that had not yet reached us.
I gripped the steel table, gave my blood
its border, gave the ceiling back its height:
Keep flesh in flesh; keep sky outside.
Let no door open for the dead.
Morning came dressed as morning—cheap fit,
light a yellow label pasted on light.
Cup clicked loose from cup. Bread meant
the blunt white noise the mouth made
before swallowing. You sat across from me,
sleep-seam on your cheek, soap cooling
on your wrists, your thumbnail split,
my black cuff neatly mended.
I knew each dear fact. None consented
to become you. When you pushed the pear
toward me, its nine wet seeds wheeled
in a burial geometry; I watched them
until your offered hand went down.
Downstairs, the unclaimed man in Seven
had gained eleven ounces. We drained him,
zeroed the scale, weighed again. Eleven.
Bell crossed himself, quit.
By noon I had pawned my watch
for three more folds. I wanted proof
that proof had not made proof too small.
That night I bit hard on outside.
My ribs answered inside:
Keep flesh in flesh; keep sky inside.
Let no door open for the dead.
The seam on Seven unstitched itself.
A depth poured upward, cold and dry,
through which many-jointed measures
ferried sparks from sum to changing sum.
His lungs rose. The room lost no air.
Under his tongue, a small dusk turned
with weather of its own. I thrust two fingers
in to stop the turning. My hand came back
older: nails horn-thick, wedding scar
unmarried from the skin.
I tried the lock-word at the basin.
The drain returned it first:
Keep flesh in death; keep sky inside.
Let no door open for the dead.
Then every drawer knocked once.
Not one by one: one knock wearing twelve
dead hands. The slab scales buckled.
Seven sat up, though sitting was only
the room bending him toward me.
His sockets held all the distances
an eye refuses
in order to find a face. He called me
by the milk-name only you still used.
You came through rain in your green coat,
angry, alive, breath making and unmaking
one white cloud. You said, Come home.
Home swung loose from every house.
When your hand
closed mine, Seven smiled with my mouth.
When you touched my cheek, twelve jaws chewed.
From drawer, drain, throat, and keyhole:
Keep flesh in death; keep sky inside.
Let each door open for the dead.
The doors obeyed. Their hinges were ribs,
their rooms were wounds, their thresholds
the thin warm errors by which one body
pretends it is not another. The dead rose
without leaving the slabs. The slabs sank
without moving. Above us—or deep
within the smallest clot of Seven’s heart—
something immense revised its hunger.
I called your coat green. One jaw closed.
I called your hand a hand. Twelve closed.
I called your face an arrangement of heat,
your tears salt-work, your voice air
trained briefly into grief. With each
correction, the bodies gained.
Their weight cracked tile. Their shadows
grew bones. Your pulse thinned beneath
my thumb until it seemed a rumor
matter told to keep from hearing itself.
You struck the packet from my fist.
The foil cut you: one red bead
rounded on your palm. For one breath
it had no farther meaning. It was warm.
It was yours. You said my name.
I could have answered.
Instead I bowed and licked the last black verb
from the little wound. Behind my teeth
the lock turned teacher, the teacher mouth;
what fed on distance now spoke near,
tender as your hand had been, exact
as twelve dead tongues completing mine:
Keep flesh in death; keep sky inside.
Let each door open for the fed.