Resting in Pieces (edit 1)

Been dead these many years
and yet lives

in ways not to be comprehended,

not just the physical —
lips, eyes, chins, a voice that pulls

all the way back to childhood;

other ways too —
the damage done,
secrets that haunt in the cold evenings
sweats pretending

to be the precursors of flus and colds,

a hand lingering, brushes a cheek,
a kiss to the forehead;

the ebb and the flow —

once in a crowd
bodies moving away, she turned

and waved
another time a smell

when a washed sheet
flapped into my face,

staring into the night sky,

the uncut jewel of dreams,
catching sight of her at the periphery,

every time a plum falls from the laden tree
her laughter,

my sadness at the loss

captured with every frail leaf’s

descent towards the ground —

loved ones dead
never depart
haunt all cracks and crevices
from the hollows in ears
to the spaces in mouths

I walk with her in my ambitions

and cry over words

I know she has said years after

she passed
and the dirt placed on top of the casket
has had time to turn hard-edged
and grow the grass placed there —

a welcome mat
so when she returns to her grave

after a visit

the coffin is not sullied —
she would not have demanded that.