Tattered Shroud

a poem for Nex Benedict

An anchorman lists laws that hunted you
Legislative words
moving teenage fists
and I understand it is important
In a week they’ll return to open hatred
We must clamber through this window
To show the world some scars

It’s not what I want to know
The contours of your death are harrowing
and familiar
I need the story of your life

What did you wear when you felt radiant?
What songs flew bursting from your heart?
When you felt unmoored in your body
as I’m adrift in mine
what rituals brought you home?

Hagiography is its own kind of erasure
hammering days into a halo
I wish you could be messy
Life bursting from the seams

Now your mother begs
“Please do not bully
us for our ignorance.”
Weeping at the foot of your cross
huddled by the tomb
a voice cries out
“They are not here,
but damn well should be.”