if night empties itself into day, what is dawn
if not a bowl? what is the sky if not a scene
made for mourning? when i tell you i want

to cradle the sun, i mean both: i do not understand
the sheer size of space, and: i wish to be burnt alive
by what i love. though it is spring now, it feels

nearly identical to late autumn when the gift of a
coat stuffed with down fled me from one end
of the country to another. away, always, never toward.

though summer is reaching its greedy hands
toward the present

this morning i woke before the sun

to a door left open, and frost
covering each rooftop.

for a moment, i thought it snow. then i closed
the door. started the heat.

though the birth of day is no doubt
beautiful, i have drawn my shades.

i am, as always, afraid
of my want.

if time spreads like a blanket across
trembling shoulders, what then
must i do to avoid comfort?

what is the solution to a problem housed
in the only body i’ll ever be given?

if there is only one way out in the end
is it a tragedy to reach for it decades early
or is it another means to answer
curiosity? is it an ushering in
of an inevitability?

if i were to choose the end of my grief
as the start of yours, would you forgive me?

think me selfish? think, finally
this is someone i can understand?

if day stretches like an endless desert
to walk through, what then
must i do

with my love of the sun?

BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; a writer creating delicate connections. they have called any number of places home; currently, a single yellow wall in Michigan. they have been published in FOLIO, ALOCASIA, and Figure 1, among others. they are a poetry reader for Capsule Stories.