The Dead Have More to Say
You weren’t there when we closed his eyes,
when the technician gently wrapped the good old man
my father, your husband of forty years,
into a clean sheet and carried him away.
You were absent for weeks, trapped
in bright rooms with visitor logs
while my father folded himself into smaller
and smaller packages and stopped asking for you.
You ask if I have “closure” – that dangerous idea
we clutch like the bottom step of the last train leaving.
I have heard of those who return to sit with the abandoned:
a touch on the shoulder, a breath of lavender on the mirror,
as we turn suddenly and reach for a hand,
smooth a place on the sofa, go
to the kitchen for tea and lemon bars
because our sentences are not finished.
Originally published in Tipton Poetry Journal.
Charity Everitt is retired following a career in technical writing and
engineering software design and development. Her poems have appeared in Lyrical Iowa, River Heron Review, Comstock Review, Concho River Review, and Sky Island Journal, among others, have been among the finalists in contests at Common Ground Review and Rock, Paper, Poem, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Translation from the Ordinary, was published in 2023 (Finishing Line Press.)