the doctors told him, he'd be gone by now   his lungs full of blankets: burnt, black, and bound   he buried his family in the backyard   flooded the basement, filled it up with tar   we borrowed their old clothes, and then we undressed   we stole a trampoline and made it our mattress   and slept with all the houselights on waiting for them to come   he said: 'it's so much easier to believe in nothing;   it's so easy to wait impatiently to die.'   he pulled his pants around his ankles   and he showed me all the places he went purple   because he held too hard his own skin   since no one else would touch him   and i (s)mothered him, beastly   and we shared our severed head dreams   i held him where the sickness was   and i nursed him through the night   we stayed that way all night