Like a Wake

Like a wake, but no one has come 
to sing karaoke, play pusoy dos or 
mah jong, drink rum and warm 

coke. No flowers with funerary 
smells in the living room, no 
curling satin ribbons, names 

inked in permanent marker—they 
are not the only things that bleed. 
There are no votives or pictures 

in frames on a mantel strewn 
with White Rabbit candies, shiny 
tangerines, saucers of food offerings. 

But there are things that, when they go
from your life, feel like a death, a mourning.
Long road of grieving, no headstone in sight.