The Last Weekend

I keep thinking about what else I can do.
I keep making lists and crossing off tasks
like that's the answer
like that will alleviate the anxious waiting

My futile need for control.

I keep thinking about her body
a skeleton with a skin draped over it
gravity at its worst
bloodless, bones in a genetic bag

Her face is my face.

I keep thinking about the incense
rising in slow motion
wafting over her casket
holding my mother's hand and laughing

Standing alone and crying.

I keep thinking about what it means to be free
What it means to be a woman
This life, a raw and empty plain
I am a lamb, prepared for sacrifice

He says, you're crazy, but I'm only trying to plan. So the sickness in my gut will go away, so the tightness in my chest will abate, so I can finally get some decent sleep around here! Normally, I would get away, sitting in a window of white light I'd let it cleanse me. But I want to be here, in the nitty grit of this life. There is no escape, for now, I am trapped in the bag of bones that holds my consciousness. But I won't be forever.
We're all thinking the same thing, and I'm wondering, what will mine be like?
This unfamiliar cultish ritual isn't quite the way I'd like to go into the ground.
She's smiling.
She's crying, a strange cough caught in her throat, a white, quivering hand covering her mouth. Can this be the end? She's thinking

My blood
The half of me
She loved and didn't always do it right
Are we
the sum of our life
or the way we died?

It's open, and then they close it. Speaking in soft voices and we're laughing, and I don't feel close to her at all. In fact I feel very far away and removed from this. A part of me wants to go home, and they other wants to stop time, walk in the stillness and touch the face that bore me into this world, feel her coldness and find some forgiveness in all of this...