We bury him with his baseball cards
because that’s what he has left,
what his life amounted to. The electronics sold.
The house turned to soot at the whim of one cigarette.
Even the girls figured him out.
We bury him with his friends
outside the funeral home, too scared
to enter, sweating like burned spoons.
We replace his face in its forever bed with each of theirs,
their pockmarked arms and rotted smiles.
We bargain with the god of too late.
We bury him in his father’s suit, which was too big
for him before and ridiculous now, but nobody
buys a new suit for the dead. We leave him
to lie in his potential.
I bury him with a picture of me. Don’t bother
to tape the jagged, toothy edge back together.
He ripped himself out on purpose–and look
how I’m smiling in the photo, Look
how I’m leaning on nothing
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