by Taylor Stafford

its stomach spills over—handful

of cherry seeds, gleam in its eyes reaching

but the body is not a body

a mother holds

 

The car keeps moving, wings

explode into the air like an air

conditioner turning on at night

sounds like hands shuffling cards

 

This death doesn’t sound like anything

it is not the kind of death people stop

to place a blanket over, or bury under

the tree in someone’s backyard

 

it looks like a bodiless jacket,

half-zipped and lit from the sun, on the part

where an arm should be

 

The deer does not get to be a ghost the way you are

 

When death swallowed you whole,

you were not

in the throat of a road or the saliva

 

of a sea, you were

kisses on the palm

before

I put them in my pocket

 

My keychain echoes down the hall

with your navy-blue name tag that reads Abigail

sounds like your collar coming alive

all over again