We watch the moving topography of brutality, the red slopes
and orbs mapping deaths from the virus, from fire, from firearms.

It feels impossible to think red and visualize beauty and yet
red roses are splashed all around the city, so brazenly alive

that they stupefy me. People stop, pose, take pictures
of their loved ones under the mess of flowers.

I love the red beak of the rose-ringed parakeet even after I find
the threat they pose on the land I live. Affection means both fondness and disease.

Words reflect the world, which is to say nothing makes sense.
If we say only civilization can finish the world,

does it mean to complete or destroy? If we say the world might weather—
to endure or wear away?

A burro walks into a lake and kills herself
after losing her newborn, and I believe in an elsewhere.

When my dog died, the other dog
did not kill herself. She did not walk from room to room or stop eating.

Theorists have wondered, does animal suicide mean suicide,
‍meaning, do animals speculate about the future,

meaning, do they understand death. I think what they mean
is if animals know that death means the end,

the whales beaching themselves, the dolphins
ceasing to breathe, the deer leaping off a precipice

leaving behind a pack of hunting dogs, my dog
who died, my dog who did not kill herself—

and I want to say when the donkey stepped
into the water and when the whale leaned

against the aired sand and the dear leapt
into the sky, they chose an elsewhere,

which is not to say the end.
My mind is often elsewhere. My dog knew

the other dog was elsewhere, wherever that was.
Elsewhere, the wild moon spins with its moons,

bottlenose dolphins sway in sleep. A tree grows fruit
in a dream. When Kathy the dolphin was captured

and put elsewhere, perhaps she thought the way to move
to another elsewhere was to change her breathing, her body.

Do you think I am an optimist and a romantic?
I am terrified of death and dark

and hell and heaven. But here, now, because of the burro, I believe
in elsewhere, I swear, that when I am dead I’ll be there,

wherever that is, but truly,
I’ll be everyone else’s elsewhere, when everyone is everywhere

else, which is to say is also elsewhere.
I’ll be elsewhere,

just as how here, now, I am, in my room, alone,
anonymous to every lake I’ve never touched.

I look at the ocean like it’s goodbye.
Somewhere, it is touching a land laying prey to fire.
My grieving mother brings the forest inside, a green excess.
When she repots the trees, it is not unlike changing diapers.
But she no longer tends to the small abject frames of the dying.
These days, everything feels like the end.
A few days ago, a typhoon shaved glass off buildings.
A woman in her sixties bled to death after it cut
the window into her arm. The name of the wind, Maysak,
means teak tree in Khmer, I learn. The timber
retains its aromatic fragrance to a great age, I learn. I am always
learning. What is it that I want
to know? There is nowhere in this world
that I want to live. I look at your face
like it’s goodbye. There is nowhere to go.
I shut my window because what else
can I do. Tomorrow’s typhoon is called Hǎishén,
meaning sea god in Mandarin. I confess
I want to live. Nowhere, but still, with great desperation, I want.
What is it that you want?
Tell me, is your face the same as mine?
Tell me, do we see the same things?
Tell me we are the same eyes
Burning through the night.