Send Off

The dead are having a party without us. They’ve left our worries behind. What a bore we’ve become with our resentment and sorrow, like former lovers united for once by our common complaints. Meanwhile the dead, shedding pilled sweaters, annoying habits, have become glamorous Western celebrities gone off to learn meditation. We trudge home through snow to a burst pipe, broken furnace, looking up at the sky where we imagine they journey to wish them bon voyage, waving till the jet on which they travel first class is out of sight— only the code of its vapor trail left behind.