You are a thing of art.
The installation of a lifetime
With a sightless generator
powering your methodic movements.
Your autumn hair falls to the dirt
Beneath your naked toes.
They wiggle.
Your eyelashes fall
tickling your nose on the way down.
They’re caught on the dead flesh peeling your lips away.
Your smile melts
Sliding down the crevasses in your chin
dripping onto the newspaper
You’re pretending to read.
He whispers,
You are a thing of art.
The installation of a lifetime.
Your fingernails have yellowed
To match your skin.
You tell your kids it’s the sun trying to keep you healthy.
You tell your kids to thank the sun.
You tell them it’s normal.
Your stomach has bloated.
It’s ready to pop
But a woman with a needle empties it back down to size.
She comes to do this every three days.
You don’t eat ice cream now.
Instead, You smoke for the taste.
They can’t kill you anymore, you say.
You sit on the deck and watch the sun
Rise and fall.
You feel your soul begin to leave.
Come back.
Come back.
You whisper through desperate pleas.
I’m not ready yet.
Your wishes are roped into the clouds by the stale Kansas wind.
You’re still here.
You bath that night in a pool of regret. Hoping they will get sucked away
You watch the Crimson wash down the drain.
They’re still here.
You’re little girl sits on your lap.
Blonde braids unkempt and untamed
Tears are running down her cheeks.
You squeeze your eyes tight
And hold her close.
Blood leaks from your eyes
You open them in horror.
You’ve stained her hair.
She’s not the little girl of ten years ago.
You cry together
Hovering in a place between life and death.
She clings to your bloated stomach
Holding you in this reality.
The next day she goes
You say goodbye.
She cries
And hugs you tight
Knowing she can’t hold you in this life anymore.
She releases and does not look back.
November the twenty-sixth
Two thirty-one.
After Mourning.
Matthew. A miniature you.
Danielle. Daddy’s little girl.
Tiffany. Your fire cracker.
Mariah. Your level headed eldest girl.
Chas. Your late first born.
Vicki
Greg
Thelda
Valerie
Louise
They will never forget.
They whisper to your soul
as it leaves its confines,
You are a thing of art.
The installation of a lifetime.
You are infinite.
Mourning is indefinite.
Love is forever.
Forgiveness is over.
Never to forget.
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