I swallow my grief
like a confection,
tongue the sweet until
it too disappears
like polar ice and the bears,
bees spiraling to oblivion,
my father wasting in his sick
bed while the family scrolls
for the latest disaster,
cat memes and gluten-
free everything. I worry
the treat but the shape still
holds like a ghost
and I wonder if you can lie
to something suspended
between dead and alive
the way the world seems half-
nostalgic, the other focused
on the future like how I freeze
in the kitchen again,
remembering my father
singing about tigers escaping
the Earth’s gravity to fly
on the springs in their tails,
plenty of bears and bees,
all that sickly honey,
like the syrup he poured
over my pancakes,
as if the sweet could go on forever.