Your mother told me how the rain
came down in sheets
the morning you were born too soon
in the back
of a station wagon,
wipers blurring streaks across tomorrow.

She wrapped you in bloody sheets,
curling up
at the side of the road
until the storm subsided,
you burrowing deep into her breast.

Paper comes in sheets,
love letters and poems
are the sheets that tell your tale,
your chapbook
defines you like a toe tag on a corpse.

You and I danced in the sheets.
You filled my bed like a mummy fills its box,
all bile and bandages,
turning my bed into a sarcophagus,
with no provisions for the afterlife.

Your ghost tears apart my home.
I watch
the layers peel away
from shingle to sheetrock
leaving an ugly drunken core,
parched and dry.

I sit in my car for a long time,
the rain pelting down like nails into a coffin,
wiper blades blurring streaks
but there is no tomorrow,

only time for the final sheet
to settle over the face of love
slowly being zipped
into the black body bag of despair.