Flowers for the Sick and Dead - A Collection of Poetry

dissolution

 temperature-less water runs down my back
flowing through the braided rivulets
i have allowed the water to carve in my skin

my tears dissolve, run down my soaked face
down my quivering chin
through my wet, knotted strands of hair
down the drain and to the ocean
the salt of my body joining the salt of the earth
dissolving
like a popsicle

popsicles were the only things he would eat
in his last days
they were sweet, and easy to eat
(his jaw had trouble moving near the end)
and when he lapsed into that silent sleep
preceded my shuddering, papery coughs
that my mom mistook for death a few times
the red and blue and purple of countless popsicles
stained the corners of his chapped lips
beneath the sterile hospital lights

my mother dissolved two hundred packets of aspartame
into a hundred cups of hospital coffee
forcing herself awake
so she wouldn't miss it, and he wouldn't be alone
when the time finally came
for him to dissolve away from this life

i am now in the process of dissolving myself
hunched in the dirty ceramic bath of a rental
letting the water eat away at my flesh--
lapping at me
licking me
eroding me
and carrying me out to the ocean