Category Archives: death

untitled (quilts always warm)

you don’t have to remind me of that
orange and brown
soft knit afghan quilt that
matched nothing
in our house
but in theirs —

the olive green
and the hanging plates
and that day
laying on the hardwood waiting

no games, no pick up sticks
only a new jewelry box
and my reliable Alley cat
in a house creaking with grief

dismissed
gathering stones
in the drain pipe
that felt like a river bank
little sister in hand
knowing more than they knew –
quilts always warm.

buried alive [the creeping closing distance]

panicked i

feel the sand up over my chin filling
   my mouth gritty sand pressing my cheeks
         and tears
                        spring instinctively with the sand’s
                                                        creeping
                                                           closing
                                                            distance

body cold while the crown singes and the end of the world bird circles

crabcakes with the living

i laid my twin sister
of 87 years
to rest
in a humid mausoleum
fans churning stale air
stirring my white hair
slightly
the pastor speaking:
twins have a special bond
and
the Lord is with you.

i feel her
squeeze my hand and
no one notices.

Oh Marie! Oh Marie…

i watch the coffin blessed,
say goodbye to my husband,
(also waiting)
and leave
to go eat crabcakes
with the living.

A Slip in the Shower

I slip in the shower, face to the tiles,
and think,
God I don’t want to be found
dead like this.

After I practice
holding my head up, shoulders back,
as if good posture
can somehow stop the inevitable.

After, pillow in
my lonely arms I
wait for ghostly whispers
but there is only darkness,
             and quiet places,
street light illuminating
small spaces here and there.

Those spaces
are small glimmers
in a grand scheme.

I wish I knew
how to tell your story.
I wish you could know the sum
of all
these secrets.

Looking down the hall
is the same as peering
down a deep dark grave.

Simple truth is
we continue to bury those we love
unless we go first.

untitled (Alan S.)

Alan, when I should have been crying about you,
I wasn’t. It was suddenly my grandmother’s funeral—
The church looked the same, that one hymn… oh I wept.
And it wasn’t that I didn’t feel the sadness of your death, Alan.
You were young and cheated. It was just
That all I heard and felt reminded me of her death.
All that surrounded me, suddenly,
Shuddered and quaked in my bones so that a flood—
Him, her, them— all those dead and gone came over me.
In that instant, I saw my friends, family,
at my funeral, and I witnessed them weeping. I realized they too
May be crying for someone else.