the museum of everything

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Eventually there's only a riddle,
the old one about the ax—
its head and handle replaced
a thousand times.
Are you steel, once sharp, now dull?
Or are you the thing it splits?
Are you the swinging
or the replacing?

What is the trigger and what is the tragedy?
What is the doctor visit and what is the disease?
Is the fourth baby you almost adopt
an echo of the first three
or of the two you never birthed,
who would be ten and a half now,
but who
is counting?

Every sad thing deserves its own museum,
but every museum has the same
glass case, the same
new paint smell, the same
paper towel vendor
Did 13 people die in a mass shooting
or were there 13 mass shootings last year
or last weekend?

Eventually your body becomes
a museum of everything that happened
and everything that didn't:
the sturdy handle of your spine
the ghosts of your ovaries
the holes filled
the way the ocean consumes volcanoes
with flat glittering blue

Eventually there are no more words
or there are only words,
it's hard to tell

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