At what point does a person become a body,

then a body a cadaver,

a thing as much a thing

as the effects left sunning in the street.

Orange shoe. Skateboard.

Bicycle helmet. Wheels still

spinning light between the spokes

while the body cools.     

We see this and remember

all the names

of the dying.  We don’t know

 what to do with dreams

or the series of failures

folded neatly in the ribcage

of a young man being revived in the street.

Do they exit the body,

not like a soul but like

breath? Or settle like sunken, vaporous stars

in the shadow left

on the warming pavement,

breathing light

into the wreck?

Kathryn Haemmerle

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