My Suicide Returns to Me Each Year by Patrick Lawler

My suicide returns to me each year
Bearing less and less resemblance.
He is fat with rumors. My suicide
Is laughable and fat, mumbles
Latin into a cramped hole.
Over anything that doesn’t move
He pauses, moves and then reflects, thin as doubt.
“Fool,” I say. My suicide returns.
He doesn’t know me. He says he has learned
The ingredients. “Idiot,” I say.
Fat with what he does not eat,
He moves beneath his movements, gestures
From within. I identify myself
By falling through the slot.
Without my thinking it is winter, it is winter.
All by itself it will be spring.