I should like your middle name less than my
first but the bell of it still rings in my
belly and chokes me. It calls me like a
haunting ghoul, rends my soul apart until
barbed pieces rust in metallic memory.
Grief thick and heavy as stone sits deep in
my chest. I want your first name in my mouth,
sacred as holy verse gently humming,
cool as a mother’s hand on the forehead
deftly breaking down skin of my worries
softly peeling back the bone of my fear
and like the soft trilling of the songbird
it spirals up my backbone crooning in
concert or flies at my ankles, running.