Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.- Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus”
The wineskin lies deflated.
Once holy and precious sacrament,
Dead tissues now repose.
I ate my way out of your heart.
Your dried and shrunken ventricles
Closed up like purpled rosebuds,
Aorta curled and withered,
Paint-peelings of muscle membrane.
I could breathe a dandelion puff
And send you skittering away on the wind.
Your hands I cut off and kept in a jar.
Selfish as always, I wanted a guarantee
So I sit at the window and pretend
Warm blood still runs through them,
Pretend the rest of you still
Holds me.
But your face has gone.
Even in the photographs, blurred and faded
You vanish like a ghost.
I cannot recreate your chin,
Your nose,
The two slender lines on your forehead.
If we should meet again in brightest day,
And pass each other on the street,
I would not see you,
I would not know it was your face.
But still I look for you in every wretched place.
