Your Average Death Poem

Krissi Banzon

I want to write about her
Fading like my blue bruises
And a chip from a crucifix
Which has hung on the wall
Now yellow and green
With two thousand years
And 53 lives worth
Of family photos
Severely stagnant and immortal.
I am lost within the confusion
Of nicotine stains on the fingers
Trying to reach through the glass
And the satin-lined home of a box
She has to wait in until
Her bones are no longer her own
But fodder for the anamnesis
Which will split them open
Without so much as a by your leave...

(she would have said).

Years later, we will take Jesus down
And the shape of a cross will be
Lighter than the paint now evaporating
Condensing with the memories
Which will live on only for as long
As the pillars of this house are left standing.

But for now, I think of her there,
Under the three slabs which fell
So hard on the corners of her new take
On the after-life, falling like the blows
Which drove those nails so very deep,
Reverberating so wantonly that a whole town
Went to bed earlier than usual.

Every religion has an opinion
Of where she went with grandpa
Who waited for 13 years
Right outside her door,
Pacing, steadily wearing out
Her skin, stepping in time
To her gurgling breath.

And it's a relief to know,
That whichever -ism -ist
Was hitting the nails right on,
That she's in a good place.

LitNet: 18 May 2005

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