Fire-swept

I will be in Phoenix for a week.
I have left you a jar of locusts
With unnerving human faces,
A box of rusted keys
That match erased doors
Of all the fire-swept houses
Of your regrettable dark lives.

Just past the bluebells in the garden
I have left you
An organized hive of bees.
The ether is in the garage
Between the shovel and kerosene.
(I started to kill them.)
(Did not want to leave you without a project.)

I have left five newborn kitten heads
In the freezer next to the deer tongues.
I have peppered love letters
In spider webs and the snake nest.
I buried a few in the yard.

Don’t save them for a rainy day.
Read them
While you can remember
You were young and loved.

Use them up as lullabyes
For your tumultuous upside-down dreams
Just in case I do not return.
Do not play with fire
Or the ashes in the urn.