A hot trend

 

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