05-07-2014, 12:01 PM
My mother burned
when I was eight
I watched her skin dance—
a red-and-orange danse macabre;
ashes-to-ashes now means
everything to me
The thing is—
of distance, age, and time,
which one closed before she expired?
And most nights my pillow smells
of dust-to-dust when I dream
of her shriveling mouth,
and the voice that once sang
me to sleep as a child
when I was eight
I watched her skin dance—
a red-and-orange danse macabre;
ashes-to-ashes now means
everything to me
The thing is—
of distance, age, and time,
which one closed before she expired?
And most nights my pillow smells
of dust-to-dust when I dream
of her shriveling mouth,
and the voice that once sang
me to sleep as a child