The road to the funeral home
was plagued by
brown Cadillacs stretched
out on overgrown lawns,
and cats lounging lazily
on splintered planks.

Eleven people sat scattered
around dozens of expectant
chairs laid out in long rows,
hairlines moistened by a
lackluster air unit wheezing
in the one window.

The Reverend approached
the pew and began his
assault of sentences--
they spewed from
his lips like careless
bullets, and they stung.

He shook his hands at us and
promised that she had
been delivered to God…

I wonder if he meant
delivered like her
neighborcare packages
containing the familiar numbing
glory of ****** that got her
through cancer after cancer,
limbs and eyesight failing,
decades old and stewing
in her stomach.

He sputtered out syllables
like bouts of fumes-
they filled the air and I
swear I could smell them,
the stench
of stale cologne
and stale culture.

I could taste the
disgust coming up from
my esophagus,
that bitterness the brain
dispenses when anger
can only be expressed in
a tapping foot and sourly
sagging lips.

I sat there, silent, as that
ancient man
with his West Virginia
draw clumsily
stumbled over a list of
relatives “Marge” would
meet in heaven.

He forgot my father,
skipped his name and
my heart began to pump
faster, my cheeks burning.

He did not know that she
was Margie and we would
remember her soft yellow curls
and infinite knowledge of
antique dolls,
hundreds of pristine replicas
beaming in glass cases.

He did not know that
her lips were electric;
she shocked our cheeks
with each hello
and goodbye.

I wish he knew her like I did,
the young woman who sat
stiffly in this plastic chair,
her little girl all grown up.

I wish I could have pushed
him off the stage and
made up for the seven years
I missed of kisses and
old stories and support.

But I sat there, silent
and stared at the cracked ceiling
tiles and fake flowers
on the front folding table,
yearning for the pounding in my
temples to stop.