For Those No Longer Coming

The sugar oaks are no more and the birds are no more and the blue shed on Elmville burned down long ago. It’s early morning when my father asks: what do we do with the half-chewed tongue? With the fillings? What of the corpse? Where can we store their heaving belongings when all the doors are shut to us? The great metallic mouths always locked bright. Yesterday there was the well where I got married but that is gone now too. Possessed one night we tore through each brick and swallowed until our stomachs cold cracked open the new pit. This is how humans lose walking. How we lose the color yellow. The flowers dipped in the field and meant each breath of it. There are no more parties to speak of. Just each on our own slipping into black nightgowns, crawling through the back door all in the same direction, heads down and wondering where everyone else has gone. Which sheets to unwash for those no longer coming.