On the Limits of Memory

During that last funeral, before the end of funerals, I discovered a 
dozen tiny holes where the moths did their invisible work in the sleeves 
of my suit. Like a cancer’s thread, the gold spider holding on, even as 
the day turns its gloss toward home. One after the next, each owner 
throws down his leash & such weight collects, collects, collects. Too 
much of anything—it could be love or clean air—until suddenly 
there’s death woven in every cough from the nearby window, the 
chorus of crows up among the limbs a block or two over, the last of 
these many calls shaking that almost ordinary morning when the trees 
of heaven appear as yet another nothing just beneath the lawn, where 
every invasive rooting sleeps hard, sleeps deep, but never for long.

Read more from Issue 21.2.