Road stippled with rain, I slam imaginarybrakes in the back seat. Sparrows in bushesand I’m breathless, scanning for bear, cougar—something to explain the brain’s involuntarycircling the drain, a hole I can’t fathom.I’m sick and tired of dying—tired of its gripon the belly’s pit, sick of the shiverit slips between beats, the ceiling’s spinbefore the heart settles back to its rhythmand muscles unclench. In bed I used to prayfor everyone to make it through the night.Now I lie awake and wait for day to break.Say something, I beg the dead, tell meit’s easier in the moment to let it gobut they have no promise to give, and the listof names grows daily longer until I knowto live is to gather dying about myselflike a quilt in the night, like sheets, like skin.