The Obituary Never Did You Justice

I spent June sixth standing in a moonbeam canoe in the backyard,

Wearing my boxers and my ex-girlfriend's bra, as a joke of course,

In the midst of all the Jack bottles we used to drown in,

While I tossed Polaroids of us into the aluminum trash can to burn.

The cigarette had turned my fingernails dusty gray.

And I was thinking how people die all the time,

How scary it was to know that it can't always be controlled.

Rufus, the mammoth St. Bernard next door, was whining and scratching at fleas,

Watching the immense midnight snowglobe swirling above him,

The stars tiny white bursts of light pricked through with a thumbtack

And one great white hole, the moon,

Strongly resembling the fist-print in our bedroom wall.

The fire turned her film to ash,

And as the rain hit the earth, I began to sail,

My vessel the S.S. Petrichor,

Floating along crushed flowers and broken stilettos.

I remembered her cherry lips wrapped around my name,

The plain little fingernails skimming gently across my chest,

Before she started reading Edgar Allan Poe and realizing what was wrong with her life.

And as the rain began to ease,

I lifted my face to the sky,

My arms dropping to my sides,

The water putting out my cigarette at last.