I took a bus home

to your nightly reenactments, the ones performed before

you ever hid your lighters

or begged for air.

My blood’ll sort it out, you promised,

ignoring London and your

heredity, all those veils of

ash and example.

In your bedroom

you tell me not to call it

cancer, that pain gazing at itself

in a mirror of failed

body: this is the text you send me

when you want the car in the other lane

to hit you. Your fingers consider

my wrist and the steering wheel,

choosing neither of them.

When I take the bus back, I am some

numbness like your lungs

selfishly

vertical, overlooking

the tar-black hearse above you

completely, perhaps

forever.