Funeral

God ahead, move forward, and garland my grave with wallflowers. Tell the priest to keep it short because to feel this space put between me and her is like an arm cut off and taken away from the body, but kept alive and out of reach. And I fix my hair, I tie the Windsor knot my grandfather showed me, I scrap the razor against the skin, and I clean my face before I go before mindless drones like factory workers without tools. I push my shoulders back and hold my chin high, but it is all smoke and mirrors It is all just a scheme and an invention to keep me from saying the words that want to spill out like red wine on a white table cloth.

Dig my whole deeper than the rest so that if by chance she sheds a tear that may slowly seep through the gravel and dirt down to the boards above my head it cannot reach me. For if it does I fear the smallest amount of that purple dark liquid may spring life into that organ and cause the nails to be ripped from my fingers when they dig at the splinters that hold me down. Lie to them. Tell them I was a common man and decent one, but don’t tell them of our love in your way because even Marlowe’s best sonnet would grow pale in its wake and seem mundane and obtuse.

I would make the suggestion of gouging out my eyes, but this would be meaningless and in vane for her smile and those eyes that change by God’s light would continue to haunt my memories as they do now. For to be without her or not in her favor would be plastic fruit in a pot painted gold that chips when it is moved. It would be placing that same bolt to that same piece of metal in the line day in and out. It would be like breathing in the air without the smell of the honeydews or to hear without ever knowing the warm sound of French horn.