Deceased

I peer into your casket
Disbelief
Your face radiates peace and serenity
Something life rarely offered you
So it seemed
I think of you with sweetest memory
A gently floating dream of bygone yesterdays
I choose to think of you in this happy way
For I cannot think of you in our present reality
This funeral held only in my imagination
For truth is you still live
yet, for reasons I may never know
you have chosen to abandon me
oh, we still talk
but we talk as strangers not as friends
there’s a tension in our words
a tenuous caution
a fearful withholding
that if we were to speak honestly
hearts and lives might crumble
we reinforce shabby soul structures with superficial framework
our lumber and nails
niceties and pretense
Thus, I have decided to live
Believing you to be dead
My conversations with you
Those with a ghost of a long lost love
For better to be haunted by fond recollection
Than terrified by the eidolon of what we are
Living in these shadows and lies
I’ll see you again tomorrow
When I bring flowers to your grave
And the first handful of dirt
To bury what must have been
The illusion of “us”