Alone After Death

by Stacy Heiney

1.
The place I grew to know by heart—
nothing changed, except for the dying.
Look how the city still spins its breath
around my faith in measurements
that decrease light to dim
to dark; a beep, a hum, startle;
we accept it or we lie.

There is a physical sound that mortifies
in its silent percolating, that white froth
at the mouth from the dying breath.
Memories cross the length of pain,
binding like wounds which will thicken
and tighten each time
I say it’s your turn to call.

2.
This morning I awoke on the roof.
The rain sounding through the old
gutters wasn’t thinking about the dead
or the way the dying make their
plans to go without notifying
a beginner to take a first breath.

3.
Grief comes in multiples as varied as snowflakes.

4.
Tomorrow the newly dead will find their way
back to the places where everyone is gathering
to draw the curtains, water plants,
gather up the cats.
Relief sometimes trumps sorrow.

5.
Dead people play tricks on us.
They show up in our dreams as ghosts.
We learn to hear their chiding
when the lights flicker or
a wind leans in from behind.
The leaking tile in the ceiling’s corner.

Everything tastes bitter until the last
of us leaves, shuts the newly painted door
and clutches to our chest whatever
it is that softens permanence.

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