Upon staring out my frostbitten window, the stars began to swoon

Hey, Lilly, it’s me,

your old friend, Darcy,

who hung herself from the crabapple tree

at dusk last August. Sorry

I hadn’t thought of what I was doing

to all of you when I climbed

that tree. All I could

feel were crabapples breaking

under my grasp, painting

my hands in fresh juice. I used the broken

fruit to wash out the bruises

on my ribs before I

fell to cover the pain. Dark

handprints all along the branch I chose

as the last thing I would ever touch.

I hugged the trunk

before I left go and

thought of you.

Hey,

so the dreams are true,

there is something after death.

It’s not really life or heaven,

but     I became

one with the dark matter, I fly

by on shooting stars, I do rings

around Venus and loop-de-loop

on Mars, I visited the horsehead

nebula, and toured the gamma quadrant.

Did you know that you can split

stars in your hand and you can hold

a new sun to your chest and drink

the rays spewing out the seam? It spreads

through your whole body and you

glow like you were never anything

less than a starburst.

Anyway,

I just wanted to tell you:

you can stop putting flowers on my grave,

I have four hundred billion stellar ones

that never wilt.