The funeral mumblers’ queue, when you are its object: tired nothings mixed with strange new intimacies.

Insistence:

—at least they weren’t the slow dead

Assurances:

—surely it’s best without warning

Implications:

—they must have done something to deserve it

maybe in another life

And (I want to argue) maybe my dead died quick for a material reason.
Maybe they went up like a forest fire from dry tinder in their heartwood:
a thin artery wall easily blasted by that lightning stroke,
a brain alight and bleeding out,
then invisible crematorium fire
—I remember my grandmothers in pyres before death’s mechanization;
so I imagine red fireflies in the rising smoke—
and finally, ash and bone for the river
to rest in the long slow silt of the sea.
Should I worry about the dryness of my insides,
its susceptibility to a dropped match?
I’m unnerved enough to quit a habit.
Two packs a day is too much fire in my hands, I’ll put it out.
And more assurances:

—heartwood is always dead, like the past

we are only alive in our surfaces

But my throat’s still dry from not smoking.
My throat’s still tight because I keep my dead there
and tug at my collarbone to make room when I inhale.
I’m named for the lightning
like they knew we’d die like that

Contributor Notes

Vajra Chandrasekera is a writer from Colombo, Sri Lanka. His work has appeared in Black Warrior Review and West Branch, among others. He’s @_vajra on Twitter and can be found writing at http://vajra.me