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When I sat for a moment in the bleachers of the lower-school gym to watch, one by one, the girls of my daughter’s kindergarten climb the fat rope hung over the Styrofoam pit, I remembered my sweet exasperated mother and those shifting faces of injury that followed me like an odor to ball games and practices, playgrounds of monkey bars and trampolines, those wilted children sprouting daily in that garden of trauma behind her eyes. Then Rachel’s turn, the smallest child in class, and up she went, legs twined on the rope, ponytail swinging, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five feet, the pink tendrils of her leotard climbing without effort until she’d cleared the lower rafters. She looked down, then up, hanging in that balance of pride and fear, then glancing toward the bleachers to see if I watched, let go her left hand, unworried by that boy with the waffled skull, stiff and turning blue under the belly of a horse, or the Christmas Eve skater on Cagle’s Lake, her face a black plum against the bottom of the ice.

and piles them on the driveway: femur, rib, jawbone with a few flat teeth attached, dozens of thin arced parts. This one for me—40 today. My birthday sent her to the woods and back. Chloe leans in on her knees, arranges the bones along a concrete seam that leads out to the street. In this next decade, she'll go: head off like today, take into her arms all she's curious about. Her line of bones makes an arrow; sun lights them like a sign. She'll go: undeniable as these bones, baffling as what animal they'd make. She's on all fours. The way I labored: some wild thing. She lays out arms and legs; the bones in line make a spine. My height. On the driveway lies my body —when it held her—inside out. The way she came: like bones. Gleaming, after living in my dark. Gleaming. So I can always find her.

My days among the Dead are past; Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old; My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day. With them I take delight in weal, And seek relief in woe; And while I understand and feel How much to them I owe, My cheeks have often been bedew'd With tears of thoughtful gratitude. My thoughts are with the Dead, with them I live in long-past years, Their virtues love, their faults condemn, Partake their hopes and fears, And from their lessons seek and find Instruction with an humble mind. My hopes are with the Dead, anon My place with them will be, And I with them shall travel on Through all Futurity; Yet leaving here a name, I trust, That will not perish in the dust.

They grow in number all the time The cat, the Mother, the Father The grandparents, aunts, and uncles Those I knew well and hardly at all My best friend from when I was ten The guy who sat with me in the back Of the class where the tall kids lived Bill the Shoemaker from Lyndale Avenue The Irish poet with rounded handwriting They live in The Land of Echo, The Land Of Reverb, and I hear them between The notes of the birds, the plash of the wave On the smooth rocks. They show up When I think of them, as if they always Are waiting for me to remember I drive by their empty houses I put on their old sweaters and caps I wear their wristwatches and spend Their money. So now I'm in six places At once—if not eighteen or twenty So many places to be thinking of them Strange how quiet they are with their presence So humble in the low song they sing Not expecting that anyone will listen

My dear and only Love, I pray This noble world of thee Be govern'd by no other sway But purest monarchy; For if confusion have a part, Which virtuous souls abhor, And hold a synod in thy heart, I'll never love thee more. Like Alexander I will reign, And I will reign alone, My thoughts shall evermore disdain A rival on my throne. He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That puts it not unto the touch To win or lose it all. But I must rule and govern still, And always give the law, And have each subject at my will, And all to stand in awe. But 'gainst my battery, if I find Thou shunn'st the prize so sore As that thou sett'st me up a blind, I'll never love thee more. Or in the empire of thy heart, Where I should solely be, Another do pretend a part And dares to vie with me; Or if committees thou erect, And go on such a score, I'll sing and laugh at thy neglect, And never love thee more. But if thou wilt be constant then, And faithful of thy word, I'll make thee glorious by my pen And famous by my sword: I'll serve thee in such noble ways Was never heard before; I'll crown and deck thee all with bays, And love thee evermore.

My dearest dust, could not thy hasty day Afford thy drowzy patience leave to stay One hower longer: so that we might either Sate up, or gone to bedd together? But since thy finisht labor hath possest Thy weary limbs with early rest, Enjoy it sweetly: and thy widdowe bride Shall soone repose her by thy slumbring side. Whose business, now, is only to prepare My nightly dress, and call to prayre: Mine eyes wax heavy and ye day growes old. The dew falls thick, my beloved growes cold. Draw, draw ye closed curtaynes: and make room: My dear, my dearest dust; I come, I come.

when I no longer feel it breathing down my neck it's just around the corner (hi neighbor)

Now that obituaries come online with coroner reports and full disclosure, imagine the ways to betray a man come out of hiding to die. Ask the bloggers who weigh in on my friend’s bad habit, who make of it their own drug strung out across a mirror, so when they pay tribute to their power, how they had their doubts about his talent, his flu, I think how lucky I was to receive the kindness of the weak. My death space, as they call it, as if it’s me who died. A life, we know, is complex. But death is simple. A place to talk shit, to license grief, or barring that, to kill it.

I do not understand the poets who tell me that I should not personify. Every morning the willow auditions for a new role outside my bedroom window—today she is Clytemnestra; yesterday a Southern Belle, lost in her own melodrama, sinking on her skirts. Nor do I like the mathematicians who tell me I cannot say, "The zinnias are counting on their fingers," or "The dog is practicing her geometry," even though every day I watch her using the yard's big maple as the apex of a triangle from which she bisects the circumference of the lawn until she finds the place where the rabbit has escaped, or the squirrel upped the ante by climbing into a new Euclidian plane. She stumbles across the lawn, eyes pulling her feet along, gaze fixed on a rodent working the maze of the oak as if it were his own invention, her feet tangling in the roots of trees, and tripping, yes, even over themselves, until I go out to assist, by pointing at the squirrel, and repeating, "There! There!" But instead of following my outstretched arm to the crown of the tree, where the animal is now lounging under a canopy of leaves, catching its breath, charting its next escape, she looks to my mouth, eager to read my lips, confident that I—who can bring her home from across the field with a word, who can speak for the willow and the zinnia— can surely charm a squirrel down from a tree.

My doggy ate my essay. He picked up all my mail. He cleaned my dirty closet and dusted with his tail. He straightened out my posters and swept my wooden floor. My parents almost fainted when he fixed my bedroom door. I did not try to stop him. He made my windows shine. My room looked like a palace, and my dresser smelled like pine. He fluffed up every pillow. He folded all my clothes. He even cleaned my fish tank with a toothbrush and a hose. I thought it was amazing to see him use a broom. I’m glad he ate my essay on “How to Clean My Room.”