PART IV: GRAFTING

First there is the matter of selecting a healthy segment of the original and removing it. Then the burial ceremony, in the right kind of soil to take back the names you shared. The part that will flower and/or bear fruit comes from another source. This is how to attach an aftertaste to a stress receptor so that it can be properly absorbed. So that you can go back to work. Be careful to wrap the site in the right material: bile, shoelace, mail addressed to the person who lived here before you. If it is tacky, if it begins to itch, if it results in sporadic dizzy spells, it is beginning to take hold. Do not unwrap the adhesive from the graft; let it rot and fall off on its own. Just throw out the books of matches. Just let the road get repaired all around the neighborhood. But not the faucet. Not the stiff lock. This improves pathogen resistance. You will be fortified enough to wait it out. Over time it may become difficult to detect the site of the graft, though the product always contains components of two genetically different sensations. Like wrapping a gift: put your finger in the center just long enough—

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Making this poem was its own kind of grafting by which the instructions for grafting roses became the instructions for how to move on from something or someone. For roses, this process is done so a certain flower type can be grown on the hardier root system of another type. You see why these ideas belong together.