Tell me
             whose voice will be strong enough
                                                             to enunciate the dead.
I know
                 I’m braver than droplets.

Brave as the tongue’s elegiac rose
                                                 laid on the grave’s black hill.
Brave as a whip taming pastoral clouds
                                                 in the century’s darkest storm.

Questions of space
                          lengthened by death
                                                 have always been unbearable.

Nothing compares to maskless faces
                                         with backs walled into viral caves,
blinded by a dark so heavy, even bats
                                  beg the stone to show them how to pray.

That’s when I come in.
                          That’s when I warn the light to
                                                      save us quick or never hear

the sound of bright again.