. . .
What
Comes After
It
was the teeth
not
shining, straightened
pearls,
but yellow &
crooked,
the discs at the center of a daisy.
Those
yolky florets called and she climbed
in
lining her body
with
velvet to fit next to that still smiling
scent
of pine & rot that once lurched
through
life whispering secrets
on
smoke breaks until someone laid it here
in
her path. She got closer
pressing
her face to skin that had already
started
shrinking
inward
pulling
tight, clinging
to bone & muscle, knowing
it would be first to leave,
but
wanting those last seconds of
closeness
every
second it had never asked for
laying
slack all those years.
She
saw all this in that tightening and nuzzled
against
that cold sad thing,
something
now, never
someone
again
just
bits of a self doing everything
they
could to hold tightly to each other.
She
lay her cheek on its breast
and
heard an echo chamber, hollowed
forgotten,
these
once
great ribs
housed
an orchestra, still
she
reveled in that silence
bringing
every bit as close as she could
so
she could drink it in.
She
lay in that coffin nestling a
carcass,
corpse
being a little
too
human to describe what
remained,
she
counted every piece that longed
for
another
knowing
longing
is
a pleasure all its own
and
every pleasure needs a witness
so
she curled up and
saw
that ending, joyful in the right light
as
each bit said its last farewell.
Judson Easton Packard
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