You have not died yet. Instead, you are walking down Thirteenth Avenue drinking your coffee, thinking about death, all the different ways, all the opportunities glimmering ahead of you, thinking about the woman who poured your coffee. The woman at the café who asked if you needed a receipt, rang you up and took your credit card, is a love you will never have though somewhere in your brain her long hair is living out a dream of wheat, her dress, how it must feel around her, snug and slippery, is falling behind you, almost forgotten, so now you can get back to it, death, your little love, your hot nipple-action of fear, a train in the dark before it breaks, rising up as you cross the food carts on Alder and head for the park. There’s a garbage can near the west entrance where you throw away your empty cup. Maybe, because you are wearing your new shoes, you are not heading east

toward a ceiling fan and pills, toward a six-pack and medicated patches. I lost you to a bar and an all-night record store. Lost you to an old Beastie Boys T-shirt and shredding punk rock guitar. I found you in a tin can of cigarette butts beside the door to the AA meeting where our sister is standing up and walking to the back of the room for more coffee. I found you in my kitchen, in the handle of a knife, I found you sitting on my bed, right in the middle, a shadow made of air and dust. The galaxy’s lifting me across the street. You should come back from this deep-sea dive, rise up in your turn-of-the-century scuba gear while I stand on the prow of the ship, making sure the oxygen is flowing down the black rubber tube into the black of where you are. You should come back from the fields with your pockets full of grain, your feet covered in hardened clay, back from the planet you discovered but never had time to name, you should land in my backyard at night, an earth landing, a triumph of science and engineering, the rockets cooling as the door of your spaceship

makes a great sucking sound and begins to lower, the lights from inside the vessel lighting up the back porch and fence and you walking out in your silver uniform or in the green and gray body, the silky wet skin of an alien. I will take you back anyway you want, I will look into your diamond- shaped face, into your glowing egg-large eyes and still recognize you, still open a beer and sit close in the yard while you pick at the grass, staring up at the sky, and cry and scream for missing it.