KOSS

CW – Suicide (for both poems)

Twelve Past Dead

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Guess again, the rookie cop told me. Each time
I mis-guessed your password, he got locked out,
so you were twelve minutes closer

to dead. I had tried
on my own earlier. The synced
Apple, a lifeline

tied to your phone GPS, a homing
device, he said, yet no cops had the magic
to unlock the tablet, so every twelve

minutes, with a knot in my throat, I’d croak
out another string of wrong
combinations ‘til the call finally came,

you were found, you were not
responding, you were gone. Next morning
in the still of your apartment, I sat cross-

armed staring at your computer. You came
to me, ghost love and shaped
your password out of air—but for what? Last

laugh? I typed it in, and up popped
your hotel bill with check-in time,
11:00 AM. You didn’t want to be

found ‘til now. How might I
console myself with this? For hours
I poured over your files and letters, your years

of photos. The nudes, a dotty Sylvia Plath
selfie where you re-incised your own facial scars,
and bits of saved conversations. Coming clean,

you said, coming clean. You need to know
these things . . . You need
to understand me . . . to let me go . . .

Alternate Thanksgiving

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In the alternate universe, we dwell—early morn—in the ironies
that are Thanksgiving, discussing abundance

and at whose expense. I am your “Cherokee dude”
and in kindness, you pull a comb through my wet tangled

hair, wresting the handle with your weight.
You wouldn’t mind my pounds of grief, speaking of weight,

as grief would be a fogged imprint in the startling ever-now
in which we live big, love each other as geese,

tumble into each day as feathered clock hands,
but with no regard for—or awareness of time’s dreadful ticking.

As the sun rises, we open the doors to the coffee shop, fire
the grill, make Jesus-faced pancakes for tickled Brits,

who trickle dependably through our door, eager for pastries,
for Deepak Chopra-blessed rolls, marveling at each

ordinary miracle. Customers fawn over your hand-drawn cards
with happy bears or devastated girls with weeping magpies nested

on their heads. The smell of coffee stirs me through associations.
You prefer tea, but always pour me a cup, and I’m in love

with the rising steam, and your hands wrapped around the bone
China, the ritual of it, that you do it each day, and it’s an act

of kindness I can count on . . .
In the lull of late morning, there is time to fuck you in the kitchen

as lunch soups bubble on the burners, and bread you kneaded
rises in a lone corner oven . . . Our kitchen, we run as we please . . .

On this particular Thanksgiving, there is none, as I am no longer
American, and you never were. The bells bang the glass as workers

arrive for lunch. We work, our faces aglow in our secrets. Just the two
of us, yet it is not work, and no one gives a shit we’re gay. The town

is small, people are lost in their habits. We serve and pamper them.
Make idle chat—or you do, as you are like that. They are passing

tourists in a queer world that belongs to us, our coffee shop—with beaten
wood floors, and food we craft by hand, and our kindness and attention.

When four-thirty arrives, we lock the peeling door, you pour us
coffee and tea, and we rest, knees touching, as our breaths

slow for evening. Steam again rises from our cups; we sit in silence
as traffic rolls by, and the sun begins its early departure.

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Art by Meridith McNeal