It was hard for us, the way you died
every day, slowly and then all at once,
just as such things are said to happen.
Spring came, so soon it almost seemed
you could’ve waited, but I know, I know,
you couldn’t wait. My head was full of names
of flowers, and I kept picking stones
out of the earth as if making room
for you—organic matter, ions and atoms,
the clock of your body still ticking somewhere,
but backwards. I have given up, you’d said.
If I sometimes felt it could be all right
that things went this way, it was because
I knew the end was not the meaning
of your life; it was something else instead—
a series of small explosions, brief flame,
color and light, the breeze lifting the hair
from your cheek. It was those moments
when you took your picture in the mirror
and the camera widened and narrowed its
one eye sleepily, like a cat loving you.
All those close-ups of flowers. There was
the dying back, right down to the ground,
and the months and years where nothing grew,
but some summers they opened and opened
and opened; like the slash of red lipstick on
your perfect mouth, this was it, this was living,
and the whole show took your breath away.

Emily Berry

Emily Berry is the author of three books of poems, DearBoy; Stranger, Baby; and Unexhausted Time.