C A R Y L U N A

I got drunk on the plane
and watched the first half
of a movie about a man
whose older brother dies of congestive heart failure

it’s told in a way
that ping pongs between
the present and the past
and at some point
in the past
the man inadvertently sets his house on fire

there’s a rather
gratuitous scene of firemen
carrying the blanket-covered bodies
of the man’s three small children
out of the wreckage
long after they’d put the fire out

the man and his brother
who’s not yet died
just stand there
watching
not crying
just looking defeated

and I thought to myself
I know more about pain
than you ever will, fucker
my memory of that morning
hasn’t changed in over two years
and by my own logic
it never will

the hole I made in the floor
with the force of my mouth
pressed against it,
my screams shattering the hard wood
and concrete foundation
and all the layers of earth
goes straight to molten core

the policemen who kept your suicide note
for weeks, as evidence,
well, I’ve killed them a thousand times
in as many different ways
and sometimes now
I do it just for fun

before I got on the plane
I waked down to the beach
and watched the water lap the sand,
they’d poured your ashes
into the Peconic
and so I talked to you

I always talk to you
but at that moment you felt closer
and the tide was high with
the fullness of the moon
and it felt like conversation

in hindsight
the movie is garbage.
maybe it’s all garbage.
because who wants to watch an old man
who was once a young man
that got sick
and sicker
and became old
and drove himself into town one night
to hang himself
in the basement of his music store?