Spare Parts
We were only bodies after all:
odd-shaped things that
cry, breathe, manage themselves
out the door to daylight
and tire scratchings each day.
Until the slip of nights eternal
beckons, and we go under
its graces, separating
in the abattoir our
twenty-or-so pieces of worth
From this place and next.
How strange it must be when
all is removed, shorn of hair
and meaning, tossed to oceans
When rest takes us over
and we wail no more for
lost mothers, no more for
once-great loves, no more
in the stitching spaces
we used to roam.
“They won’t remember your
innards, you see; whatever they say,
it’s just a form to fill in
with dreams, hopes, desires.”
Whatever you were was just
whatever they took from
the odd shapes and made whole.
