Inside the Columbarium of My Old Misery

Behind the saints & other tchotchkes, behind the urn
still waiting to receive me—

I’ve slipped the summer I scoured Europe
with my Death. When I was Death’s best mount, the mare
made biddable. Soft-mouthed. Eager to be ridden.

In widow’s crepe, how ferociously I courted him,
how gladly I amused him
in a gown too girlish, the old scums fingering my hem.
Death gave me his presents, making me the trebuchet

I could only fling against myself, a tocsin blaring,
a strobe light strolling midnight with the whores
on the Via Vallazze, or when placing my weight on
the Alps’ snowy crusts, testing the tender veil
over each bottomless crevasse—

wherever I walked, from whatever I leapt, Death’s footsteps
lived inside mine. Everywhere a cathedral, & I the cloudy
white candles I lit for myself, his most gifted arsonist
setting fires in memoriam for someone I’d never met.

Dung, Ironclad, & Blister—
behind this glass are the relics I save, beetle shells
peeled from me through Death’s careful attention.

Remember me, please—
dumbstruck. Demised. Resuscitated.
Death’s willing vehicle—

a smash faintly outlined on cobblestone.
Who lived a little more by dying—
brightly once—if briefly.