they wanted—no, they needed
to touch you one last time.

so they trudged the tombward path
with their perfumes and their spices
their strips of cloth to cocoon your body in
for its final transformation back to dust

 

their shoulders almost broken with grief,
heavy as the cross
that crushed the life from your flesh.

 

let me fall in step behind them.
let me take my place in that line
of broken hearts bearing a cross of
grief together.
let me shoulder my share of the burden

 

and let me not rush
to the first fingers of dawn, frail and trembling,
reaching past a rolled-back stone
to empty space where your corpse
should be—

 

no. let me linger in the moment when
your corpse still lies there
and anguish fractures the air
into splinters that cut the lungs.

 

this moment matters:
your brown body
with the breath pressed out
by the inexorable boot of Empire
matters.

 

and the moment that comes after
cannot ease this one.

 

it never has, and it never will, for

 

there are still bodies broken,
breathless, beaten down
by Empire’s brutality or else its apathy.

 

and you, with us to the last,
still lie among them—you hold
them close
and share their final exhalation
be it in a hospital bed, the street, a cell.

 

so let me not sprint to sunrise
when your body can still be found
nestled with cold bodies in their graves.

 

blessed be the hands
that carry the spices and perfumes,
water and cloth!
blessed, blessed be the throats
worn rough with sobs
yet refusing to be silenced,
broadcasting the crime lest some
claim ignorance.

 

i’ll not dishonor them by racing past
to the future reunion of
form to dust, breath to body,
lover to loved
before they’re ready.

 

keep watch! soak in! be present
with them!
this moment is holy.