& when I’m gone will you hear my journey back ::

         {to the sun}

 this stellar arctic horse who left her star home

     :: {for your songs},

           will you remember me, a runway

       & lost neutrino,
             the runt & ruin

     of her nearly improbable
   kind, who are hard to find

               :: {even within} ::

       themselves, always
         & always so close
           to zero—        will I live on

as I did     {when I was with you},
 thin-punched & often skunned
   in reaching
     for God, an un-
       sweet-rot somnambulist who loved
         too much when she was young,

           will you listen up at the night

   as I tölt & cantor toward my solar mother,
   sonically, all for the light
   years it takes
   to find
   her?

& when I’m gone will you still feel my electrons {precocious}
 & the axels
   of my coltish-limbed youth,

that lost-every-fight-right-hoof countenance    I still am
& still {was} & that she punched
from then—

will you forgive me too, matarose,
           dear flailing heart hewn
 since ever-breaking me was
         breaking night
   within you,
       even then—

   & will you hear my high rimshot hours    {that still thin}
     a sunrise into a grace
       note,    my thin-

         ning of gravity
     between two stars that rise
   in a faint galaxy now & ever
   pulling away from this
   world—          even if you’ll never find me

       in some long ago where matter :: gave in
     to life without consciousness
   or want or home-
 sickness—

     will you imagine a world made up of those

::    {matterless}    ::

who don’t know how or when they leave it
like neutrinos, unable to touch such fleshy & atomic
you—     imagine the kind who don’t spend

hours trying to decipher your love letters & prayers, your punishments & rash decisions,
your glass flowers & border fences, nor every single gated tower that crumbles in the end,

how would you ever see us coming, we are here now, when I’m gone.

& when I’m in the somewhere {in between}, will these poems finally be free

to live
as our long
& our un-lost
peculiar velocity,        when

       {I’m gone}

 will you know you were indeed

     made up of disquieting little strings,
     all of you? No matter how

miniscule or easily pushed to the side,
you were always & easily
vibrating?

     {& when I’m gone,}

& when the theories prove wrong      & mystery
is the only, only truth,
will you hear me
in your undying

   endless wonder
     {singing

       to my own},

as I whisper, a delicate, thin bow
skidding across quark & black hole,

   the ones
   that are within us all, here
   & now    ::    & when I’m gone

         will you promise to live
         for what will come
         after you?

& if now, I tell you I’ve seen them, these secret & not-quite
next of kin,     how they already cherish

   this life of yours,
   this life now
   will you live
   without surrender,
   & promise to hold    {for them}
   one more bloody day
   of imperfect shapes & budding shoal,
   all your doubts & all your mistakes,
   the slipping of fingers
   & off-kilter chords
   outside your control—

Will you not live for the very hours already gone & no longer yours?

Will you not love the freedom of leaving your everything to the next fold?