Deer(est)

it’s a waste to save the good towels. the chocolate covered cherry. who doesn’t think they’ve time mortal aplenty? i’m saying i’m letting go by holding on i’m following my own mourning ritual of suspended state room & open burial. people also ask what do you mean by emptiness what does thudded mean what is a farand? instead of appointed departure ensconced in incense & afternoon candlelight—i wished lucy wouldn’t wake to disappear aslumber to’ve portaled vouchsafe on pink clouds over the prism bridge into animal heaven— that’d i’d not have to make this decision. v mishearing lack of instead of lap of love—it was valentine’s day everything twisted. —& this on the heels of another grief & so in no mood i said to lexi growling showing teeth don’t make me tell the vet you’re lucy. unlike the tissue wrapped finch something midnight scavenged i mean to keep her frame—outline of vertebrae nearing surface as if a rising from within no more than a rag i cradled. days later i visit the magnolia that shades the kennel coffer. first cut in the cooler weather & Lucilia cuprina acrawl, sheep-strike the fallen. sky to tomb now crowned in camellias—socket-sunken, nose lifelike but not wet. i’m waiting for piano & clover, for the adrift to stir in the slightest—the way i (& dana gay) (& v) hallucinated beloved kiki in her casket mirage as if stillbreathing

LGBTQ+ artist, NEA and MacDowell Fellow, and former Key West Poet Laureate, Flower Conroy’s books include “Snake Breaking Medusa Disorder,” “A Sentimental Hairpin" and “Greenest Grass” (winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize, forthcoming 2022). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, American Literary Review, The Yale Review and elsewhere.