Mourning thoughts

There was once a burrow

There fit my sorrow
In that sorrow people wandered
Indifferent to my might

There goes my father who
told me to first buy a car
and then a house. Or
was it the other way around?

I can’t tell and I tell it wrong
But he still takes me
to the still to be buried,
to pick on words
of people who don’t know what to say

He doesn't really know what to say
So he passes me a shovel
and we make burrows
“This space is so big”
he whimpers
Or I do. I can’t tell. 

I didn’t build a home
We store it all in burrows
and drink tea with butter
with sugar on top
at some slight of passage
that shakes less than others

Would you be so kind?
There’s no more milk,
so I run out to get some
and fall (Dad has made a habit out of making burrows
when no one watches,
and I fall)

People here know their way
They don’t need burrows
nor have sorrows, nor homes
nor cars. They don’t even walk.

My dad pretends to
so I can walk alongside him
above the dead
that jump scare me
into their stories
Why? I mourn to them
and the walls tell me tales
while I dig out the bits I know
of that which maybe happened

messy falls of them
that line up different each time
Stop!
I cry to the hand
about to touch an old sandcastle
that I made on our beach.
But my dad stops me-
a band starts to play in the distance.
“I love this song”, he says

Did you bring the car?
I don’t have a car.
Should we go home?
I don’t have a home.
He hands me the shovel.
More burrows? I sigh
More burrows, he nods.
And then home.
Who will drive?
I dig out people
who make milk runs
and don’t fall.
I wanna go dad.
Let’s leave.
I watch his hands go gray
His nails start to fall
The car won’t drive 
He can’t drive
The chimo takes over
And all I have to offer
is an elbow.

We start to walk.
I look at him but he’s gone.
I sit and look down at our burrow
People jump in and out of holes

He once said I love you,
I tell him, though he’s gone.
but I was so drunk
I asked him to say it again
to my eyes,
not to forget.
It makes sense. Right, Dad?

The people downhill
dissolve into ashes
So I walk.
I think I like it here
shoving people out 
of the silence

that floods a burrow
that fits a sorrow
where people wander
indifferent to my might

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