I had accepted that I would never see you again
before you ever died. Still air, or was the fan turning?
You asked what you were seeing when there was nothing to see.
Animals at the end of your hospital bed, but what
kind? I have never been good at seeing what is not there,
much less what is. A heartfelt gift, rendered ugly by my
gaze. An effort put in, a rejection returned. Rather,

the silence of one too removed to reject. Leave, gather
the opposite of kindling— that is what I would do. High
above us, that which bears no relation to anywhere
we will know spins. In the forest of my mind stands a hut
where all are happy and touch each other properly. She
is not there. Already the rejection is returning,
the addressee fading, the recipient small as wren.

Eric Cline is a poet. His chapbooks include his strange boy eve (Yellow Chair Press, 2016), something farther across the ocean (Throwback Books, 2017), cicada shell: life in a queer body (Tenderness Lit, 2018), and The Temporary (forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press). A more extensive bibliography can be found at https://ericclinepoet.neocities.org/