Our Night of Perpetual Sorrow

To the Orlando departed 

One moment you were drenched
In streams of songs, a geyser of lights,
A leaky sluice of bright green lasers slicing
Over your hands, legs, face, pulsating with dance –
But, within a matter of seconds, you became
A lifeless name,
Your heart paused within a cage of ribs,
Your lips, bloodless, a faded blue,
Your eyes, fixated on a spasmodic ceiling.
Sharp talons of leaden bullets lodged
Within your body’s dark interstices –
Smug in the waterfall of clotted blood,
Your rose colored lungs losing clutch,
Your ears nauseated with splenic squeals, resonant
Throughout the vault of your abdomen.

What did you think of in the lingering moments

While your body revolted to a voiceless pause?
Your Mama? Love? Your treacherous killer?
Your boyfriend across from you, folded in death?
Or maybe there wasn’t time, to think, or hate, or even pray –
Your consciousness rocking on a wooden treadle,
In and out, like flashing lights, until
Your vision blurred, echoes retracted,
And you fell into a pool of silence.

I never saw the shameless bullet, traveling

At the speed of light, paused violently by
Your bridge of bones, bowed fibula, speckled fontanelle –
Yet, felt its presence deep in me, the sounds
Of trigger jostling within my ears’ cavernous springs.  
We never met. Yet, the means of your absence
Makes my heart slippery,  
My mind, swollen with grief.
Perhaps, the pull of losing a brother,
Made fraternal by our sexual identities
Feels fundamental, engorged, all-consuming.