Alive

Alfred L

Death and the Maiden - 1900, Marianne Stokes

Alive

I keep you all alive by weaving your hair

into the very fabric of my poems,

I take your eyes to dot mine upon the page.

I curl up cursive words from your

nerves and circulatory system, then

tack them down with dissection pins.

This way you’re never just landfill in a box,

Ashes on someone’s mantelpiece.

You breathe in the pauses of my readings,

only when I do not.

You slip through me as you slipped into my life.

and I do not allow death to poach my people

Some mediums use writing,

I am the speaker for the dead.

A transitory resurrectionist by the stanza,

the keyboard is a spirit board.

Type out through me what you need to say.

Share another coffee and this moment with me.

Share these words with me.

Live on inside my body.

I can carry all our lives, at once, on a pinpoint.

I craft remains into scrimshaw letters,

Carve and filigree loss into fine art.

I keep you alive.

Breathe with the pacing.

Slip away only at the full stop.

my caption