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 Death: I didn’t expect it.

Why rush to collect your debts,

why choose that moment to shear his breath

from body, to empty his vessel, released from duty;

Why that moment?

 

Can you replay his last thoughts before you snipped them from soul?

Can you restore his last sight, before his eyes closed?

Can you reseam his skin, undo the blood blooming?

 

I cried at your funeral, one o’clock on a Saturday.

I wore an old skirt and a washed-out long-sleeve;

inappropriate for the heat, but the only black I could find.

I’d only seen funerals in American shows, I didn’t know we wear white in India.

I wore black, no one else did. People showed up in everyday clothes;

You didn’t care how we dressed.

 

I saw a dead body for the first time –

Yours, wrapped in a white sheet, I could only see your face.

I don’t know if it was damaged in the accident, but

it looked smooth in death, unreal, like you belonged

in Madame Tussaud’s.

I saw your eyelids, nostrils, your mouth slightly agape.

You’d soon be carried to Tibet, fed to the birds.

 

I cried with my arms around knees. The guys didn’t cry as much as the girls did.

Still, the segments of your life shared between us

were collected in those few hours, coming together

like a magnet over iron filings.

There: the sum of your life.

 

Death: you did it gently. You cocooned his spirit, leaked it

out of its shell of twenty-five years,

cradled safe in your silky soft hands.

Tell me: did you take his dreams,

or did you let them drift, blowing

like petals, to be survived by other minds?

Are they blooming without their gardener?

 

They must be. Why else would the world continue as if nothing happened?