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The Art of Disappearing


My grandmother taught me the rules of sadness,
​of stone hearts and game shows,
of the necessity of grease burns for the pleasure of fried chicken,
of whole galaxies in the orbit of cigarette smoke,
of empty beds and unfinished books
of unquestioning love.


And my grandfather wrote the addendum of forgetting,
the revisionist history
of hailed out wheat and hot beef sandwiches,
of coffee cups dredged for time,
of arcades and the comfort of lime sherbet,
of the prosperity in a diesel engine and fresh-cut grass.
of the weariness of bodies.


From both I learned
we are infinite until we aren’t
and that it’s true it begins the way you think it will end--
in silence and with a trick of the light:


a single shoulder blade slips translucent,
a wrist twists pellucid in the sunlight,
gossamered fingers slip through solid objects
until you are but a comet
trailing dust and ice,
disappeared to the world.