If you died tomorrow
could I write your obituary?

It would start of course
with your name, birthday,
the day you died
what school you went to

I could say the Before
you had two dogs and a cat
you loved to rock-climb
and do logic puzzles

Math was your thing
it never was mine
your hand always shot up into the air
faster than I could think

You liked doing back bends, and flips
with me supporting you, on the lawn
we floated from friend group to friend group
not really staying, or clinging on

You invited me to a sleepover
just you and me
before our seventh-grade dance
sleeping on your floor
as happy as can be
we had no secrets to tell
as we fell asleep

we were that close

And then
came the After
now that I could not write

I guess I could say

"She got straight A's in high school
and had many friends.
She had inside jokes
with the people she met"

I think

Writing the During
would be just too painful

what could I say?

It was a text
then a letter reply
You couldn't "thank me enough"
For what we had

That's not an obituary
I can't write that

I could write the Before
and then pass it on
to your new friends, any friend
because for me, you are gone

except for the sliver in my heart

Survived by mom, dad, and younger sister

Charlie was my pet rat.
She died in my arms this morning.
Her birthday was a week away and even though I knew she was old and frail nothing could have prepared me for it.
My boyfriend found her leaning against the side of her cage confused.
I had no idea how long she had been like that.
I held her for hours while I waited for my mom to take us to the vet to say goodbye.
She had a stroke so half of her body didn't work, she didn't have control of her tongue or left eye.
After a few minutes she seemed less confused as she recognized my scent and heartbeat.
Since her eyelids didn't work anymore I had to help her blink.
Her tongue didn't work so I slowly let water and yogurt run down her throat so she wouldn't be dehydrated or hungry.
This was the first time we ever cuddled, she never slowed down enough to be held for longer than a couple minutes
She was the reason a group of rats are called mischief
If there was trouble.to get into you know she'd be leading everyone else to it.
She would be your best friend if you shared your food and would still love you when you didn't
She loved her chin scratched and tried to eat my **** a few times.
Even at the end of her life she'd still chitter her teeth and boggle every time I'd put my lips to her little forehead.
Even in death her beautiful soul and pure love lit up the room
She passed a couple seconds after my mom walked through my front door.
After I took her to the vet to get her paw prints he promised me she went peacefully.
That she felt no pain and the DMT in her brain made sure she was happy.
At least she wasn't alone.
I hiked into the mountains walking down the river with my best friend in a box till I found the spot her old friends were buried.
As I write this that spot and moment feels so far away.
Like it was some ghost of myself that held her through the seizures and that covered her body in dirt.
I feel like my spirit left with hers.
Her love, like all animals was pure.
She never loved because of what I gave to her, she loved me for me.

She was my Charlie, my Char char, my charbean, my little ragdoll, my food ***, my little derp, and occasionally my little *******. She was my optimism and the silver lining to every bad day. But most importantly she was my baby and I promised to love her forever and even though she is gone I will always keep my promise.

I remember hurricane Katrina
And how it ravaged your state, you wanted to wait it out
Sit on the roof and watch the flood water disintegrate all you knew
I wasn't there but I have implanted memories of you and your father
Smoking cigarettes on top of your house
Laughing about the rage of nature
I remember skipping school in elementary
We used to walk down the paths and go into the woods and douse ourselves in creek water
And there was nothing I knew better than your face at this time
You were my brother and my best friend
And I begrudgingly remember you strung out and treating me like ****
But I knew it wasn't you who was getting kicked out of my house
It was the ******, and whatever else it might've been
I never thought you'd die alone
With not much to say for-
Not much to live for, I guess
But I knew you lived for us, Sam and I
Because when mom went you knew we needed help
And you were the big brother, and we were your precious sisters
There's nothing poetic about the way you left us at young 34 years old
And I will never forgive black tar and needles
I hope the boat you depart on burns to nothing but your ashes
And the sea takes you to a place better than ****** ever could
I never thought I'd see the day your name made it to the papers
Maybe as a success, maybe as a life that was made out to be something beautiful
But instead, I've seen you in the obituaries
Justin Colter Stilling,
That name belongs to death now.
I wish I could see you off on your trip to the other side
But instead I'll be wasting away remembering you for what you were
And it makes me wonder, how and why
We all have to die

he eschewed the label,
“Native American,” for he was *****,
and he wasn't ashamed he liked his spirits
dollar wine worked as well

cirrhosis was a family trait
though he didn't learn the word until an army doc
admonished him, saying he would earn the curse
by 45, if he kept it up

and he did, even more after that crazy
Asian war, where he killed a half dozen men
they called yellow, though to Walter, they looked
to be his emaciated brown cousins

he could stand tall, straight
with a pint of rot gut in him, burning
his belly, but not causing his head to spin
though it helped him block them out:

those he did not know; those he
slaughtered like lambs with the gun they issued him;
those who inhabited a space just behind his eyes
whenever they closed, night or day

someone found him, in his pickup bed
dead from exposure, from too many years
on the bottle, too many dreams he tried to drown
and too many ghosts to haunt his nights

Gallup, New Mexico, 1999

I did not want to write a poem titled obituary because I was worried that it would become about you. I did not want to read a poem about you out loud because I did not want anything that I wrote for you to fly away from me like you could have flown away from me, but this poem isn’t about you anymore, it’s about me. This poem is about everything I could have written my own obituary about. I was made out of the kind of smiles that show your teeth and I was always made out of the kind of skin that nobody thought they were going to need to turn into metaphors. and my scars are as pink and white as anyone else’s scars, my bruises don’t look like flowers, they look like tiny blood vessels under my skin have burst. I do not want my obituary to say that I was a valued member of a community I did not feel safe in, I wrote this poem as I dissolved in a hotel room in yokohama, I wrote my obituary once on a bus ride home from school, I wrote a suicide note on the back of a US history assignment that I never turned in, I write my own obituary once a month, sometimes once a week. I am not broken. I am not sad, not shattered. I am building an altar inside of bones that don’t usually have poems written about them. I wrote down all the words I couldn’t pronounce without breathing, and I wrote it in ink but it may as well have been blood.

If I had known that I was going to
be the last man inside you, not long
before your last breath left your lungs
and escaped your body along with
your tortured soul, I would have saved
us both the time and trouble.
Let love be!
Oh naive me!
Of course we both knew the troubles
your mind conjured, and maybe my
lack of intimacy was torturous, however, not all of the sweating and
moaning could be forsaken,
as foreplay was eased into,
which was wrongly confused as
a careless flick of the wrist.
But I suppose you knew your body better, and could take yourself
places that no one else ever could
without having their arms
pulled behind the back
and secured tightly, because
when you flicked your
own wrist and became
wet and flush,
the only moaning you did was accompanied with wincing
eyes and curled toes.

Now I'm reading the newspaper,
and your name sticks out, screaming
at me, exclaiming riddles that you can
never answer. And the one that leaves
me the most unnerved is the one right
before me, becoming moistened by
misunderstood teardrops.

What is black and white
and red all over?

I ask you,
but I know now
that you can never again
answer my call.

So I'm left with only one of
two options, both of which
feel like a handful. I can delicately
place a flower atop your new
home among the rest, or
I can palm dirt as you are
slowly lowered down and
covered with the mound
that lay beside the congregation
that finishes their final goodbyes.

My grandaughter's great grandmother
On her paternal side,
Died.
Aine's grandmother's name
Is Rose,
The daughter of
Mae
They meet again
Some day.