is flown half-mast. I want to write about the suffocating
enormity, but against the sky’s slick skin, it dangles
like a tired bandage. I don’t want to forgive
so easily. I want to play the angry faggot
but in truth I burn to know what grief
demotes your pride, neighbor. Did you lose
your son, a lover, a dog? Does it matter
that when my best friend died, one of the last things he said was
be nice to me, I don’t feel well.
I mean to say we’re all so small. I’m scared
for all of us to run out of gas
in an unfamiliar place. You know the feeling,
coasting that road
so slowly, hoping you’ll make it home.
Eric Tran is the author The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer and the chapbook Revisions. He won the 2019 Autumn House Press Emerging Writer’s contest work appears in RHINO, 32 Poems, Missouri Review, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He is a resident physician in psychiatry in Asheville, NC.