Postmortem

I died with the word I on my lips.
It only took a moment,
a slight pause as if for a line-
break or a comma, a panicked thought
or the time required for an 8-ball
to cross the baize. I died,
and the cities I harbor gave way
to squalid refugee camps
where the moon went
through a new phase
of never getting out of bed.
They fed it on thin broth
that tasted like a landlocked sea.
And there I floated like Moses
in my open casket waiting to be
adopted by Mother Earth—
to be somehow seen again, if only
by the mute-belled lilies of the valley
and their brawny, tawny bee.

OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES

• A Week of Kindness
• Herbaceous
• Crushed
• Breast Man
• Manic Pixie Dream Consultant
• Lord of Misrule
• Lilium martagon
• Cat Person
• Escape Artist
• Provincial
• Black site
• Love Machine
• Lionheart
• The Song of the Womb
• Fallen Woman
• Postmortem
• Floating World (Ukiyo)
• Insomniac’s Revenge
• Travel Anxiety
• What Does the Shadow Know?
• Exile
• Desecration
• Bubbly
• The Comeback Kid
• Outside-in
• Sequestered
• White Lady
• Invested
• Mater
• Blow
• Submission
• Biofeedback
• Public Servant
• Executive
• Specialist
• Officialdom
• Prayer Warriors
• Bitter End
• Riparian
• Cabaret
• Accommodation
• Treedom
• Livid
• Flood Watch
• Iemanja
• Imprisoned
• Downward Mobility
• Sirenity
• Somniloquy
• Master Debaters
• Helene