(I realize it would be a shame to have to miss all of the parties.)

From the fourth step of a wooden ladder, I watch a man drop a container:
graceless, matte-black, rectangular, narrowing nearing the bottom
and it was his mother and I was terrified
that all of who ever she was
would break without intention
and rest camouflaged on the concrete floor
of a garage with its door only half way open.

I am not proud of how I view the world
abruptly, there is a fleet of hearts and an estate
or a statement, the sentiment of an urn
chosen for its practical qualities,
not even the unique peculiarity
of a box confining ashes.

I understand this is not a profitable lamentation
but prolific in its unrest, its fluidity invoking
a kind of compulsive horror, a more substantial loss?
looking at a drain, emptying, I find a pattern
among the bottom of my life, which is in threads
uncontained, coiling.