September 15

I watched her car explode – explode, I say,
red fire and grey ashwork.

Her skin is roiling, laving, brimming with
burns and blisters, and water. to cool. dries
flesh into rawhide, cracked and plussed a surplus of
the body
now attempting to live unencased. All of me
falls off in time. Time is a god who breaks all that
cannot bend, and none of us bend. Time’s brother is
causality, with whom there is no negotiation, and
they tip over each other day and night, dancing as
my sister and I danced after Mass in praise of
each other’s bodies; God made into flesh; flesh
made into God. In saecula saeculorum: “world without
end”. World without end. Bodies without end. Yet still,

it ends. The world ends, my sister burns, and time comes,
it comes, it came: cracking, blistering, shining resplendant as a wave,
its peak sharp a scalpel’s blade ———— slicing
and in its wake, unyielding brother,
a doctor, to explain why, then how.
Consider this: there is a reason the red flame leaves
red scars behind. Consider also: there may not be.