Someone Call Security

This life I’ve lived is sheltered—no rope
around the neck, no gun, no burning.
No sudden knife to leave a gash

through those I love. I’m surrounded
by just the usual, heart attacks and strokes,
the way I’ll probably go, too, the deaths

that come from bad diets, too much late-
night drinking. I’ve had no direct
experience of mass death, a special hell

for the living, details of each victim lost
when there’s so much dying. A wall
of skulls built by those who remain

after an invasion. Virus-ridden corpses
abandoned on the street. Migrants’
bones picked clean by desert scavengers.

I mean by us. So many
deaths are heroic. The living plant seeds
in the earth, try to grow impossible gardens.