a burial

imagine being the first person to discover death.
your lover has passed in her sleep.
you kiss her, you touch her thigh,
you whisper her name and stroke her hair,
you listen to her empty heart
and wonder at her silence

you wore red to her funeral because
that was her favorite color and
the pastor wouldn't let you play
landslide on the speaker system
in the chapel.
the gospel choir watched you like
a bruise.
the trees sighed.
and when the service was over
everyone asked how you were
but no one really wanted to know.
thursday the air tasted like stale apples.

grief holds you in
like a corset
red twine tying you
together
when you feel like
falling apart.
the wind is stagnant
and all you know
is the heaviness in the breeze
that never comes.

and you can see it now-
she ferments in the ground the way
juice once fermented beneath your
kitchen window in the sun, you are
drunk on her body and
you never meant to be,
and the heat becomes the
only thing that is thorough
and the only thing that matters, really-
not her eyes pinned open or her
traitor waist on silk casket lining, just
the way the summer holds you like a vice.

and the silence,
it echoes
the chasm in your chest
like a gorge in the ground,
all sweeping rivers and tangled to-do lists.
the world stops
in your mind,
but you drudge through work,
menial and tedious,
watching her heart beat
in every collated paper,
every copy of a copy of a copy
machine,
every staple stuck in the corner of a page.

this is what it feels like at the end,
you think as you stack the papers on
top of one another and force yourself
to move through the tides of
closure. but you can't stop waiting
for some form of conclusion among the
collage of grass.
even now, when the crab-apples
wilt on the solemn dirt,
there is something of her
still beating out there,
and you can't hold your breath
much longer.