At the Crux

     Grieving takes its lyric turns,
         anciently,
            sometimes en pointe.

Dear Emile, I'm tolerating the tribute
of these flowers in the garden you once planted—
their modulating wits, the conspiratorial

Gothic flowers bedded themselves
in the edges of this night, the night
when a bullet pierced her rib precisely,

    Lack-luster      We told them these were our “long, empty
     friends and     hours” and that we’d nap or primp,
acquaintances     but instead we rose to all the trappings