Waiting for Cremation
There is no perfection in death.
This is not the final picture of me,
the Greek chorus that was my family,
gazing down, hissing—
adulteress, lousy mother, heretic.
False poses, opaque makeup,
stiff hands coaxed loose by the mortician,
pink rosary beads strung in mute prayer
through pale wax fingers.
Florid lilies and heaps of hydrangeas
stand watch, alongside cheerful tulips.
I am visited, prayed over.
My head propped on a satin pillow,
the double chins more prominent,
the red lips stitched shut.
This is what everyone wanted.
I am finally mute.
Son, I tell you this while I still breathe--
Place the rough grey gravel shards of me
into a hummingbird-adorned urn,
into the damp warm earth, alongside my mother.
About the Author: Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, Crow & Cross Keys, The Eunoia Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).
Image Credit: John Rubens Smith “Two ornamental urns” Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 