Baby, It's Cold Down Here

[71degrees]

Edit #1

Rejoice you are not here, flat dead
in one of these earthen plots
where they chisel your real eternity
onto a granite headstone;
instead we lie, naked and useless,
day in and night out, waiting
as an asthmatic waits for breath,
as a diabetic yearns for insulin,
as a paraplegic fights for legs

This is the time to lie down
to watch how a snowflake quickens
onto the tongue of your child,
to understand how everything
ends with a single breath, to see
the razor on the counter
and the mirror you look into
every morning and pray to God
for another day to live and breathe