The day they ask if you’d rather
be burned or buried,

the president crashes
his bike into a sand dune.

Sitting in the long waiting room
between seconds, I notice you,

made god-like by your pain,
wrapping the world around your finger,

pushing the cursor forward & back,
pausing for glints of detail

in the periphery of the shaky video:
the spokes of the wheels drenched

in the reflection of the whitecaps
slapping the shore in the distance,

the surprised look of the man
collapsed on his side, useless

as a bouquet of lilies
sagging next to a hospital bed,

fallen before he ever had the chance
to learn he was falling.

It comforts you, how in a time
before all this history,

something brutal & long gone
like a sabertooth tiger

is slowly licking its cub
into a deep, peaceful sleep.

Down the hall in the children’s ward,
we watch as a little boy draws

thick lines on a toy horse
with a sharpie, inventing the zebra.