The Dead Know Nothing And The Living Know Even Less
The dead lie down in folded sheets,
their mouths closed around the last word—
choking, that never found air.
We come after, the smallest of periods,
swallowing our questions like pills.
We say we understand loss,
but it’s only the sound of our own shoes
scraping against the floor of time.
The dead know nothing—
not how the wind feels when it forgives,
not how a daughter’s anger
turns to salt beneath her long tongue.
We, the breathing, know even less—
we name our grief and call it God,
we touch the body and call it love.
We dig through ashes for meaning
and come up with our own faces,
shining faintly in the smoke.
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