Day of the Dead

Flowers and votives attract the souls of the departed; 
and bowls of food, glasses of their favorite drink. 

Flying creatures draw near—wings like stained 
and soldered glass; feelers that curl and uncurl. 

Across thousands of nights they've hovered, 
spellbound by light, trying to sort blue from silver,

broken glass from the startling sheen on bellies 
of fish. You no longer want to believe in endings— 

Years after a fire razed a building to the ground, 
you find a creased photograph in a sheet of plastic, 

the shape of a foot still molded to a tattered 
curve of leather. What you are, what you 

become; what remains after you've stopped 
trembling—Fault lines run through everything.