1. sweep the floors so the miniscule crumbs sticking to your sole will not remind you.
2. engage it in a staring contest at the mirror. the first one to give into weeping wins.
3. sit with it in a voluminous chair, next to an open window. gauge its depth by the weather and if your eye registers color.
4. race it until your heart quickens and your whole body cries out in a dripping sweat.
5. listen for bird song on a porch or in a meadow or forest or at a park. tell it this is how nature mourns with those who mourn.
6. pet the strange dog who brushes up against your leg. she is the ghost of who or what you lost.
7. lay down beside it. stroke its hard cheek until it softens into sleep.
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Twila Newey received her M.F.A. in Writing and Poetics from Naropa. Her poems have appeared in various journals and were finalists for the 2019 Coniston Prize at Radar Poetry and received honorable mention in the 2019 JuxtaProse Poetry Contest. Her first novel, Sylvia, is forthcoming in 2020 with BCC Press. Twila is a poetry reader for Psaltry & Lyre and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.