After Rae Armantrout’s “How to Disappear”

You had been gasping
between the orange
and the red,
between the look of the intimate
and the postures of the damned.

You had been slipping
one element
for another, licking sweet molecules
without a backward glance
in the melting mirror.

Well, that was your prerogative.
That was your black stitching.

What else is a burning to do?

I watch your little lungs flicker and bloom.
Contortion of tiny feathers.

Of course there was ash
in the room. Smoke
in that sad story.

I hear you’ve developed a penchant for candles.

Do you like a steady glow?
Or would you prefer tremblings,
oscillations,
the slow confabulation

of a lost warm shape?