Against Cremation

When my grandmother was cremated it did not seem odd By the end of her life she had already gone through so much division and subtraction And she was never that big to begin with

You were not that. You bent steel with your bare hands, I saw you do it - it was crazy. You were 6’4” and solid every inch of it You were warm and present and had half your life still ahead of you And now you're dust? No way. No way someone like you could fit into a jar. Ridiculous.

She says you probably like it because it's more metal than getting embalmed You becoming indistinguishable from saw dust And I know it was probably your choice so my opinion doesnt matter But I fucking hate it. I keep wishing I could picture, if not you, at least your corpse Some vestige of you slowly losing its shape to time I watch the buzzards fly in the sun set sky and think about how you don't have eyes anymore I work with my hands the way you taught me how to and think about how you don't even have fucking hands anymore I eat and think about every part of the process you now lack No tounge to taste or teeth to masticate. No pharynx for the food to tip over into your not-there esophagus. No muscles to move the food with their peristaltic contractions. No stomach walls to hold it in, no stomach acid to sequester away the meal's protiens. No stomach at all.

I'm mad at you about it And I'm sorry I'm mad

I threw up again last night thinking about how much I miss you How much I'll miss you forever Because there's no more you for me to pour my affection into, so I just have to keep missing you Because you're just dust