Is this grace? All the dead boys I be
-come sing back to me.
lover,
it’s not
too late.
Out through the open sill, past
open ocean, they name me lover
& bid me wade in their lilac wine-
dark wavesong. Jeff: am I still
too old to claim I’m too young, to keep
anything from going wrong?
Yet, I mouth along to the tide.
I swim. I tread, but it seems still
like slipping into some cold
canal. I tried. Tell me, Jeff: when
the Sound pools around me
in winter & the chill melody lingers
—is that how the rush of silence
filled your voice? There exist new
warm hurt now, new horizons
to drown in, but it’s the same
water still that spills down
on funeral mourners
its falsetto. Rain, on the sill
keeping tempo. Window
open to waves wailing, I
should have…
should have…
should have…
Adrian Dallas Frandle (they/he) is a queer fish who writes poems to the world about its future. They are Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Press. “Book of Extraction: Poems with Teeth” out now with Kith Books. Find work online at adriandallas.com
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