There it is, finally, the square black box
with a faint birr, a voltage, on my front doorstep.
This is what is left of you, dear brother
your skull, your ribs and femurs,
your sick liver and blistered lungs,
your bad teeth, your voice
all drained into this box.
I’m afraid to hold you long so I sit you down quickly,
so as not to drop you, trying not to tip you so that
your fragments will not collide
and so here you sit on the window sill
which your presence
makes seem like an altar now
so I step back with tingling and shudders,
unable to open the box, to touch it again.
I can only stand, still as you, stiller even
as if alone and frozen on a glacier, eyeing the
box as if there were still a ticking
coming from you, as if I could smell smoke, as if
an unnatural force pushes me away from you.
I can’t imagine what you look like in there,
mere soot now, but I have read about cremation
it’s the trend now--the dead chose burning,
they want their fillings and metal valves, plastic
replacements, all melted down, smoked,
their loose particles coming to a cool standstill,
living only in the mortal minds
