1 A pair: In the lives of suicides.

she, the bird who let her feathers my hand
they told me i would outgrow her but i never
had wished but to evoke a bit of honesty like
hers was gas inside her car in the garage
at fifty something? having finally been left

by that double, with whom she sat
in bars and coffee shops, restaurants and
of course most importantly the basement

where they learned that yes they could

be poets; putting ashtrays in their shoes,
they talked about the suicide
that they would take inside them
like a pledge of the impossible.

Did Sylvia have any notion, then,
she would be dead in
two months after they had made a pact that

finally here in their lives they would stop
the wish to end their part. but Ann, Sylvia,
Virginia, Marina…
couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t? Does it matter?
Yes. i think it does. So Sylvia was first to break
the pact the pair of them had made, and stuck her head

into the oven, hissing gas, louder
than voice or silently like words put
down, and Ann was angry, saying that
she stole her suicide. But stealing, did she still
her life?