We talk about how to love
the dead without killing them
again, and again in our
minds, with our mouths.

I swear we will love you
as you were, and not as we
made you in our wishes
for the average
accommodation, that
american sitcom mom.

We will love you without
erasing the unpopular
hysteria of your embrace

or the final foaming
followed by silence—
and those sirens
we couldn’t hear
across an ocean.

That nothing
did not spare us.