Elegy

In sun the sunburned skin sloughs off the sunburned shoulder. Most folks believe this is the body’s slow mend. Most folks believe in the good yolk of the soul. I believe in autopsy lingo of natural causes should be replaced with of long-term exposure to the dim, unwavering radiation of the morning star. The evening they burn your body, I step into the garden and arrange a crooked line of birdbaths to skip stones across until a bell tower tolls its eight arguments against daylight and the skyline illuminates, ragged and unmended like a poem turned on its side. The evening they burn your body, I believe I’ll step into the living room and be greeted by you or by someone who could play you in a movie. The curtains are an aurora of earthly proportion. You don’t exist. A flash igniting the paned glass is the silent lightning outrunning its noise. You’re on fire.