Lazarus has nothing on us,
I say, breathless in the thin mountain air.

You sigh heavily, eyes meeting mine,
as a dewy mist ran like shrouded cloth
over what’s left of us,
snow veiling the mortal wounds
we pled within. 

Passing ‘round a pipe, we smoke our herb,
and giggle in that dry way,
when you turn and say, casually,
that there is something wonderful, miraculous 
between life and death. 

I nodded at the thought,
bathing in the rocky shadow of pike’s peak,
counting our blessings cheap. 

Playing with dirty snow 
we bury each other
and mock our own resurrections,
acting out our final mistakes.

Now, it rains granola and Birkenstocks 
on us, in every fevered dream
we have raptured since

and I am led here, to this place,
tethered to your frozen, young corpse

with the bite of each frost only enough
to make me hope it wasn’t real,
that we had never come to this place. 

Our smiles are penniless, 
and what we had 
crumbled through our bony hands
a long time ago. 

I don’t know if we were ever happy here
or had been celebrating, 
dancing above our own graves, 
all this time,
knee deep in the fall,
the white crust that dresses us.

The dead bury the dead,
the sorrowful mountains howl,
and the congregation applauds
now that the offering is fresh

but there’s no going home,
or returning to who we were,

no, not anymore.