WORD MORTICIAN

By Joe Dolce

We call on you, word mortician,

to use all your skills.

Let us remember it beautifully.

Do not show us bruises

and the settling of blood.

Do not describe the sunken

and shrunken birdlike

bones or tissue skin

wrapping dry vein.

Do not tell us of fingernail

becoming claw or dissolving lung

or of pain hammered by drugs.

Open your bag, word mortician,

open your jars and bottles,

cover the bruises with powder,

pencil youth on the lips,

brush perfume and wind for hair,

attach flower and petal for skin.

Mortician, invoke your incantations

for breath,

wash the body

and lay it within this white box

so we can kiss it one last time,

so we can love it,

so we can recall that it once loved us.

Word mortician, use all your skill.

Let us remember it beautifully.

#DarkPoetsClub