For My Next Trick

Where was I, she asks,
before I was in your body?
—What was I?

You were nowhere,
I tell her, nothing.

Then where do we go
next? She presses.
Keeps pressing: Back

to nothing?
If I could believe

I’ll see her again,
waking from whatever
this world is into

another world,
I would—

even if the ending
is so tidy, it spoils
the whole story.

We can’t talk
about birth without

talking about death,
can’t talk about death
without talking
about separation,
that thick black

redaction.
Do I tell her we end
like a book—the end?

That when we’re gone,
we’re gone, too gone

to miss or even
remember each other?
She knows

what vanish means.
Pretending
to do magic,
she says it as a verb:

For my next trick,

I’ll vanish you.
I tell her the stars

are the exception—
burnt out but still lit.
No, not ghosts,

not exactly. Nothing
to be scared of.