Man

The body disappoints

Then impresses, then fails, then triumphs

It’s a sad, old miracle to have to watch

The whole thing misbehaves with hours

Dressings, tubes, fentanyl patches

Weird, sticky wrapped, crackling palliative props

In the slow banal mystery of

"When is this person going to die?"

His soon-to-be deathbed smelled of dry-roasted

"I solemnly promise I have not been giving him snacks of any kind"

Said nice Claire, the carer

"Why is there no dry roasted residue around his mouth?"

My mum asked

"Someone must’ve been dusting his chin

And lips"

His crumbling architecture

Like a balsa-wood cathedral

His buttresses and columns collapsing

And us, obliged to notice

Weakened bones, bruises

Dehydration, confusion

All these items on the death list

Correctly occurring

"Did he look peaceful when he finally passed?"

Yep

"Did he look suddenly younger?"

Yes

"Did it seem as if he was not there, like his soul had left his body behind?"

No

He seemed he was the same bloke

Dead

His last few hundred breaths

Tricky to pull in

And trickling diminished out

His children argued quietly

Fizzing bitterly on a lateral axis

While their dad shed the weight

Of all the meals he’d ever eaten

All the things he’d ever been

A vicious, stubborn

Witty, dedicated

Kind, privileged...

All of these words

Naked and cooling

Towards meaningless

Pale in the unkind light

Unfixing their meaning from the body

Gazing down upon him

Ten of us, our thoughts

All burrowing towards each other

Breathing the held air

Waiting for him to be gone

Marvelling at his slightness

The quiet, the swallows, the sighing

My cousin said

"The idea of the the living outnumbering the dead

Is nonsense

The dead club is always going to be bigger"

He said

"One hundred billion"

He said

"Or there about"

We nodded

And looked back down at this man

We apparently know

The body farted

The kind of fart you do when nobody’s there

Because nobody was

We were all dead

He was alive

Triumphantly emptying his corridors and organs

Of dirty, useless air

What an odd, blindfold performance family is

We live in such strange ways

It’s like a pact

We act

Surprised

And, by-and-by

We are