If Lizards Had Ghosts

He opens his mouth, and I see sleep in his eyes.
Crawling out of him, a lizard sticking onto his tongue.

I feed it crickets and let it sit in the sun. He doesn’t talk
much anymore. Every month I try to understand the end,

the way it comes back some times and not others.
He wakes me in the morning to blow a wish

off his fingertips, makes it for me. I’m tired and
wear a sheet over my body like a ghost all day.

The thick air does not give, it does not pick favorites.
I would love to be a ghost, I tell him. He does not reply

because of the lizard in his mouth. I tell the beast instead.
It asks me to pick a time and a place, so it can join me.

Whale Bones at the Natural History Museum

Crawling through the space between, I forget myself.
Nothing easier, you say, than to pinch a flower at the stem.

A beheading. I picture your fingers at the nape of my neck,
studying my vertebrae like they are meant to be threaded
with pink silk. We are musealized objects, forgotten

with memory of the living. We are only remembered
when there is to be a purpose for us. Forget my cancellous
bone, forget the string that has started to come loose.

What are you, when you have all but disappeared?
Your throat dies at each song, made to fit
a label on the wall. No one takes the time to read,

not even the way we were found. Our skin is uncovered,
an excavation to prove humanity has run its course.

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