Four Ways to Drown a Cloud

 

 

1) Fast or 2) slow or 3) with mercy or 4) without: her death was without. Every morning since is a firebrand ritual. Father takes his cereal in the basement of the attic where paper phantoms won’t find him. Mother does a slow waltz with stainless cutlery through the diner of dead dreams. Your old scabrous dog waits, not knowing any better, tail tied to a cloud. So you sit on a curb, bloody tissue blossoming out of your nose. A junior meteorologist, you skim cirrus, catalog cumulonimbus numbering the turgid tumblingtufts—but in your dreams hot air balloons are always crashing.

 

Your abuela once told you that your heart is inside your stomach.

 

You feel your stomach constantly now.       I can’t feel it, you swear.        It’s not there anymore.

 

Inside: a leaky faucet that can’t quit dripping her name.