Casket Parts

You researched casket parts nomenclature on the internet, just so you can weave me a sweater from the overlay skirt

of coffins. We went mudding in St. Louis on our hands and knees, leaving wet footprints on the sidewalks

tracking all the way back to Grasmere. We walked all about the overpasses. We danced on the guardrails and spat

at the cars that passed under in coats of blur. Sometimes we would catch each other’s eyes through the reflection of sewage

water puddles. I would pack the earl grey tea bags and you would get your hair caught in the barbed-wire tree branches

that surrounded the clearing in the woods. I am tired of replaying your memories on the Super-8 tapes. You once told me

my words would come back to haunt me. I saw my words rise from out the casket, shove their fist from out the grave mound,

limp across the field and pound against my cellar door. They wrote themselves in claw marks dug throughout the wood.

That’s not our wedding song you hear, it’s our séance.