They keep saying
people with severed limbs
and I want to say
though it is a small point
in the wreckage of my thoughts
that they are not with those limbs
they are without
without the legs
that climbed stairs
ran races
bounced their babies
without the triumph they deserved
without the simplicity of tomorrow
without the trust that a sidewalk
won’t rupture and swallow them again
this sudden withoutness
it chews away at my throat
like it always does
making me want to dig my hands
into the air and push it all back
as though the present
is a landslide I can prevent
with the grit of my want
and the impossible blank
of the people whose faces will never return
their absence is the opposite of gone
they are all we can think about
so I do the only thing there is to do
I stitch my words deeper
into everyone I love
and I try to believe
my wishes can travel
to mend the ones who are broken.