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 standingat 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 mouthcarried by words you’d never speak.
Later I wondered…why is catastrophe so often nocturnal,slipping through the body’s bloody tunnelsclutching secrets like black jewels.
You were buried in a mass gravelike survivors of genocide…the victim of my mother’sdecision to donate your body to science.
Could this be your last claim on earth,remnants of bonebeneath 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