5.

I was in the athletic club we’d been members of;
(I had refused to keep it up). Room after room
of empty Olympic-sized pools.

Through a door that led to elevators
I found you on the edge
of a sleigh bed, in a white silk wrap.
Snow was falling. The mattress was of packed snow.

You were content, happy as I’d ever seen you.
This seemed less strange than empty
pools in empty rooms, brightly lit.
Impossible, but you wore slippers of snow.

A seat presented itself to me – I leaned close.
No steam shrouded your mouth as you spoke.

Your teeth – your teeth were icicles.

6.

You appear, gesticulating, in a window. A handset
appears, it seems I’m to lift it, hear you
park by Braille between a rock and a hard place—
Aren’t you dead yet? We’ve had no respite from grief,
our sweetest dream is of dreamless sleep.

So many, each with a box of Light Anywhere,
interrogating matchless faces, green
with envy for the living. You flicker
into seeming, flame scorching your fingers—
but you left off suffering to prove eternal,
you feel nothing; there is nothing left for you to feel.

A few wear smoky stars like ancients
wore wreaths of wool, they move like constellations;
the silent majority darkens the visible.