I remember feeling a sort-of sense of
vertigo
looking down at my mother lying
in her coffin
Difficult not to see
my own waxy lifeless face
lying there
someday
doomsday
and it was like looking down on Earth
from Heaven
or maybe I was standing on Earth
and looking down into Hell
for the first time
seen in the empty face of
this life that I came from
this person I came out of
my maker
now just a lump of dead weight
a heavy pile of stilled flesh
eerily still
like a life-sized doll
The light that created me
that started the spark that still flickers behind my eyes
suddenly gone out
and nothing left behind but
a sagging sack of meat and salt wearing
the too-fancy clothes that
she only ever wore to funerals
That is where I came from
That was Home
now gone forever
and someday soon
it will be me
lying there like a pile of clay
wearing too much make-up
but there won't be anybody there for me
holding my hand for hours
rubbing off the make-up
exposing the rubbery grey-blue skin underneath
the way my father so lovingly did
for her