Please do not look for poetry

in your death. Your drowning or

hanging or tsunami of pills & booze

will not be poetic.
There is no residue of poetry

in a bloated cheek snagged by a fish hook,

in a cracked leather belt swaying

from a light fixture or in a sludge of vomit

protruding from your throat like a second tongue.
And certainly no poetry will fall

upon your devastated wife folding

the last pairs of your dirty underwear &

ignoring the phone on a Saturday night,

piles of pizza crusts on the coffee table,

one of your horror films running aimlessly

on the screen, wondering why you

never imagined her twitching hands,

the packing up of your extensive library,

or the signed book of your own poems,

To Priscila, my love, because nothing exists

without you, under her lumpy pillow, now

warm as soggy shoes left to dry in the sun, and

her sobbing the last of her suspect memories

of your tender eyes, your brisk, hunched

gait, the slow circling of your hands

across her belly, into the awful emptiness of

hangers, towels and toothbrush holders,

microwavable meals and refrigerator

reminders, because your imagination

failed to reconcile the oxymorons

of her & your death.
This is not poetry.

Trust me.

While I am still your wife, and not a warning.
There is nothing less poetic than your death.

And nothing more plain.