Self

Record my consciousness
at the moment of death;
not one month
or two days
or five seconds
before.

Catch it in the mechanical
as it leaves the organic.
Gather it like liquid
into a sponge.
For if there are ever
two instead of one
—if the moment of death is absent
in the new model—
than the old model has not moved on
but simply died.

And the old model
was me.

And now all that remains
is a detailed image,
a petty, artificial thing,
which will steal from me,
in its very existence,
my mourners and my soul.