I will invade you with this poem

I thought I’d take your death

make of it

something almost pretty

A few blunt lines, a few

I hope, with grace

An ineloquent invasion

To bare unwanted metaphors

Shoulder the infinitesimal weight

The soul (perhaps)

through the light-filled glass you left

Carelessly on the lead-white mantle

on the rim a smeared fingerprint

Where you paused to almost sip

finger curled around as if

in encompassing

you had no need to pontificate

Lip barely quaking with your breath

not even a mist for proof of life

As if this were some staged evidence

Fast evaporating

Settled dust

microscopic insect life

born from air and miasmas

pin-pricking the tense surface

How (later now) the wheels thin-iced

across the thrown white lines

with an animal hate

slewed to a stop

The safety glass a constellation

In the high metallic ring

To stretch

the strainéd cloth

you have been woven in

All permission moot

Emerging from the sneer

of carefully painted lips

those small puncture wounds

a wasp face where I bent to look