this morning you told me that
your pet cockroach died & i felt 
nothing about it. i'd never met him,
you see. to me he's just a metaphor
for Kafka or growing up ugly. 
i had at least six-legs until the 8th 
grade when the hormones did alchemy on me. 
i assumed he had a narrow life,
four windows & all. do you ever
bump into the glass? i don't. this poem
refuses to be nihilistic. this poem
is honest. i don't ask
you but i wondered how you 
got rid of the body-- dropped
in the top of the trash can like
a gum wrapper. i've realized that
death, at least for me, is occasional.
not occasional like, once in awhile 
but, occasional like death only
really happens if it has occasion with you--
if you wear black & all. i'm remembering 
the farewell ceremonies of fish,
the Our Fathers flushed down the toilet.
then, of course, the bodies of
mice & rats writhing & then going limp 
in the glue traps that once lined the wall 
behind our fridge; dad opening of a trash bag,
the plastic black mouth. i resisted the urge to name them.  
during college a boy hung himself
in his dorm room. i had encoutnered him
a few times, stood behind him to fill
up my water bottle, passed his door,
locked eyes for a second or two. i only
remember his first name & it haunts 
this poem like a trash bag. they notified
the school via email. i deleted after 
a few second read, still in bed under blankets.
this is all to say, that the occasion 
was not wearing black-- maybe grey.
now i live in the same building that 
he did in a room the same size as his.
do you bump into the glass?
do you break off your antennae & fold
them into coat hangers? 
i wonder what is different about me & him,
what his father did with the dead mice.
i don't know what this has to do 
with your cockroach but i hope you
made occasion with him. light sage for
the ants smashed against the dining
room table. keep the black dress,
the one with the lacey front (even 
when you're a boy). remember yourself
ugly & six-legged. 
you tell me there's only one
left in the terrarium & i feel him
circling the parameter, stepping
over the carcass. stepping over 
the trash bags. my dad said to me
once that the whole funeral business
is a scam-- that they could throw 
you in those cement boxes wrapped with plastic
& no one would know the difference. 
if i were there i would float the bug's 
body on an oak leaf down the river
sticks, where is the Ganges? 
the one that flows under
everyone's bed at night. did he become
a cockroach, quiet & still?
the glass the glass-- all four sides of it.
if occasion makes death then is
death without occasion unfinished?
i want to be unfinished, tearing plastic,
keep the glass intact-- careful. 
this poem is dishonest.
a deleted email. a grave dug out
of metaphor. glass.