When someone can’t show up, my uncle asks me to be a pall bearer. I carry Grandpa to the ground with five men I don’t know. Grandpa who used to snatch my nose with his thick mechanic fingers. Grandpa whose skin is like rubber. I carry him to the ground.

Robert Hoekman Jr thinks you die when you stop wanting. He writes and writes and writes. He lives on a farm in Virginia and refuses to be put into a box. See more at rhjr.net.