Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Michelle Bitting
Remains
Out of the ashes of the morning after,
we rose to find you gone, truly gone,
your body already a glacier
mottled gray and blue
in a mortuary drawer across town,
your frozen lip-pond fixed
in the shape of whatever last word skated past:
final message that flamed a synaptic sky
before hurtling down the neural chute,
limping into cheek muscles, tongue,
fainting at the mouth’s doorstep,
mandible a window releasing
the death note like a dove
as the flesh shut its house down
room by room, forever.
Yes, we woke to the questions “why” and “what if,”
to the sweet, slick chowders
that appeared in the kitchen,
clogging our throats,
to turbid answers we’d regurgitate for months
and still know less
than the friends who flocked
in their mourning cloaks needed—crows
perching themselves on sofa, sill—
the word suicide a rank carcass there
in the middle of everything
and all of us silent,
feeding on it, hungrily.
Crab Orchard Review ◆ 27