How close I came. The head of a deer

caught in the lights, twinned by the stars

in its eyes in the moments before.

I have killed so many things with my life.

Cows, chickens, pigs, baby ducks,

a cat, a porcupine, an early fetus my body couldn’t keep.

Accidents, but my hands stink of it.

My vanity. The narrative I tell myself in bed.

My hair curls as a eulogy for all my dead,

unspoken, a rare sunlight sound,

like the breaking of eggs.

My skin grows jaundiced with it,

under the hot lights of the world’s quiet end,

I wash and wear it in the cold soapy cauldron

of the machines that remove our smells.

I have killed a man, too.

It was either him or me

as he tried to drown me with secrets,

force, the food

he shoved down our throats

as if it could make mutual hate bearable.

How close we were to death then,

a heart like Charon crossing the Styx,

only to cross back again, but not him.

He was the pole, the boat,

the body with its coin in its mouth,

ready.