I’m convinced I’ll die putting on or taking off my pants. Something  
will happen ¾ of the way through. My foot  
will catch. I’ll topple, as the great kingdoms, my dreams  
of celebrity, while outside, rain smears the landscape  
into kindergarten art class. And I will curate that moment, as “curator”  
is the new word for everything, war to wedding.  
And with these dreary piles of laundry shall I fortify my ruins.  
It’s a fundamental part of my planned obsolescence. Me  
and the refrigerator. You  
and a line of lightbulbs. Like how I knew this guy, aging  
athlete, beautiful, who winged down his stairs one morning,  
into the dry wall, and through it, tearing both  
vastus lateralis muscles, or maybe it was vastus medialis.  
Either way, it’s vast. Physical expanses and abstract concepts vast.  

* 

So shall I be a swimmer through the walls of my life, into a bag  
in the garage filled with the baby books we’ve still  
not given away, including Skelly the Skeleton Girl.  
Natalie loved it, but all I could think of, reading it to her,  
was “dead girl.” Another moment to curate, from Latin cura  
“care.” As one who dedicates a ship headed on a mission,  
destined never to return. Maybe I’m wrong about the pants,  
as people also die getting tangled in their bedsheets.  
Slipping and falling onto a knife in the open dishwasher. The self  
shifts. It’s all about who you become in a crisis.  
And I fear I’ll become a kangaroo, or take up knitting.  
There are several variations  
on the theme of how you’ll disappear.  
My current favorite is “mysterious puff of smoke.”