It was a cool spring morning.
Beyond the kitchen window,
the poplar trees at the end of the yard were swaying,
like green skirts of young girls enamored with their bodies.
The sky was cloudless, a splendid blue thick as frosting.
When you came downstairs for a glass of water,
what were you thinking while standing
at the kitchen sink observing the world?
What does anyone think in the last moments of their life?
A red fist exploded in your chest.
Your body fell, brown cheek pressed against white linoleum,
false teeth flying from your mouth
carried by words you’d never speak.
Later I wondered…
why is catastrophe so often nocturnal,
slipping through the body’s bloody tunnels
clutching secrets like black jewels.
You were buried in a mass grave
like survivors of genocide…
the victim of my mother’s
decision to donate your body to science.
Could this be your last claim on earth,
remnants of bone
beneath a plain red brick, “Class of 1977,”
in a plot overgrown and gone to seed?
I wanted to name you,
sparkling, flamboyant, iridescent in life.
Now there’s a headstone: “Joseph Alexander,”
set among rolling hills… a spot perpetually lit by sun.
Photo by Joao Vitor Marcilio on Unsplash
