Last Remains
Feb 20 2008


I was asked to identify the body.

A white sheet
covering it like a layer of snow,
antiseptic, sexless,
softening the contours
— the summit of nose,
the hollow beneath the rib cage,
and the slightly splayed feet
holding up a ridge between them.
The way winter conceals the sins of fall
under its smooth white blanket.

There can be no doubt about a lifeless body.
The eyes stare, glassy,
the skin is pale, waxen,
and the joints seem stiff
immobilized.
And there is this heaviness,
the dead weight of human flesh
when the spirit goes out of it.
As if the living were puffed-up on some weightless substance
— like helium,
levitating us
leaking-out in laughter.
Could that be the death rattle,
the noble gas exhausted
leaving an inanimate object
it takes several men to lift?

I glanced at her face, and knew in an instant.
Yet something was different;
her eyes open, fixed
looking right past me.
I did my duty, though, and identified the body
— the mottled skin,
the coarsely sutured incisions,
the curves I know by heart.
But now, when I grieve
all I see are those dull motionless eyes,
gazing-off opaquely into space.

A violent death leaves too much unfinished.
If only she had died in bed
sleeping,
this grieving would go so much easier.