Tallying

I tally the dead. I tally today’s dead. I seek a tally of the dead or seek
yesterday’s dead. I try to count them, the dead. Reports tell me there are,
today, more dead. I announce the dead—the house is quiet. I try to
count. I seek numbers. I provide numbers. I wake trying. I cover
myself in numbers, trying to keep still.  

I seek some stillness beyond the dead—I try to just manage. I tally the dead,
each pair of lungs, I wander through numbers, the daffodils nevertheless
fly up. I hide the numbers, paper over what I know. The warm house fills.  
What are you doing, he says. I say prayers for, try to put faces to the dead

as if to anchor the dead—I condemn the dead, their utter defenselessness.  
Again I try to spare no numbers, the ones who have died, not the ones
about to die, and when I wake they are there, counted and uncounted.  
When life takes more away, I keep the dead inside me, the ones not
injured but gone, although many are injured. My counting—
what even matters? I don’t feel like going out. Soon I am counting.  

At the gate of the house I feel the faint dusk resolve. I bless the dead,
I forget the dead from last year, I lose more dead, I tally what I can.  
I count through the morning. Light drifts across the thick rug. I move
my hands as if I am counting the dead. As if I am altering the dead
in my hands as I count.