EVERY BODY

Everybody knows a lungful of water 

makes a body sink. Everybody knows 

a clenched fist makes a perfect weapon 

to bruise & bruise & 

bruise a body until it yields

until it doesn’t. Science works this way, see, 

and violence, too, of course—but everybody 

knows this. There is nothing left to bury

but the flowers that we’ve ripped 

from the bosom of the earth. Take what you can 

carry, but never resentment. Everybody knows 

this. The body forgets it belongs to somebody 

in the end, anyway. Mark our graves. Human 

decency. Somebody. Kyrie Eleison. Any body.