on April 20th, 1999
when garden soil
heaped onto my organ
in a black tomb.

At 11:29 a.m., I sought to flee
into a library row’s
compression of words
from Dylan’s pump-action shotgun.

Columbine is a byword
for massacre — fifteen
lung sacs couldn’t carry
their breaths to bed.

After you found me
breathing back home,
your hug nearly squeezed out
all the air.

I walked with a cavity
through our kitchen chamber.
Once I flayed away flesh,
why did I survive?

shot me as if I was still
behind the bookshelf
but this time Dylan’s shotgun
gets pressed into my temple.  

On an April anniversary,
beneath Columbine
flowers of white petals
underpinned by unfurled lavender,

we drop before my heart needing a host.
As you hold it to my ear like a seashell,
I hear Kacey and Cassie and Isaiah
screaming anew.

You jam those screams
back into my body, back
to the outflow of circulation
visible like red on snow.