Four Steps to Disappearing

There is nothing all people do

but glide into the uneasy weight

of death. Here, too, we start:

You are eight and sun dries

off the body before you’re out of the water.

At thirteen another impermanence,

knowing fireflies are alive by the way

they blink. You place a hand over

your chest and feel it rise and tumble.

Twenty, a formal dance

with a woman and how a night

can’t swallow ballroom chandelier fire.

Finally, how stars dissolve into

water and air and dark: maybe with sound

but not anything you will hear

until it has allowed itself to catch up to you.