The Anatomy of a Mourning

Flanked by kin
Holding up the stretcher,
The white sheet charting your casing like the afternoon mowing down inner cities.
The mosque hurling the compassionate to your side
To temporarily wreck their composure
Uncovering how you were a pillar of the community,
Your tenants took a furlough from their inflation adjusted lives
And stuffed their mouths and shot their feet under the flash of cold showers.
Doorbells ducked into tin-foil wraps,
Dirty dishes into slumber parties going through laminated albums

No one said it was your penchant for red meat,
Or the hostility of habits to diabetes,
It was: ‘remember how he used to keep to himself mostly, but was a good man.’
It was: ‘he is survived by his wife, five children, and ten grandchildren,’
The likes of who will gargle the holy water used to bathe their wounds.
–