Imagining your own funeral

Chassis and Skin

I see now the men I
never want to see again,
collective in disbelief.
They inhabit a homogenous expression
similar to mine when they left.

On red plastic chairs, they sit
along my timeline,
fiddling with flat top mineral water,
assorted sweets and
talk about me.

One says my restlessness scared him.
Another disagrees; his departure was from my need to own.
The last one who speaks, my first adult love,
only says
we grew out.

Of guilt or its pointlessness,
they agree, they were good men and I,
decent enough.

My best friend, never able
to look the part for mourning
arrives, the lips her signature red.
She whispers me her valediction
borrowed from Bukowski.

My parents are sentenced by embarrassment.
They measure reality with denial and
days on, they faithfully call on me
to awaken.

Before the furnace, I do, vacating
chassis and skin,
my favourite dress.
I am defunct of everything tellurian,
memories: the scalloped lines of my backbone,
quartered sunlight through the window.
My air-con rhythmic at 4am with
the brittle accent at the turn of each page.
Submitting myself, I am lighter
and lighter, now decimating
into the brightest light.