A Fly in My Gravy

A rice paper wing, embedded,
becoming translucent—almost nonexistent
except for the glossy outline.
Legs crinkled into geometric zigzags.
Orange specks of grease lying under him—
mutated water lilies,
and the strings of chicken meat—
seaweed dredged up from a river.
Afloat on cold gravy.

He’s dead. I should bury him. What’s the point?
I should lament in the presence of death
like others do in the open casket ceremonies.
What is there to grieve for?
A body? A body?

I realize it is the absence.
It is the absence of the moments when he was
living, when the gravy was warm and swimming
in my stomach and it is the minutes, the hours
of his life that he took with him. It is the time
that was—that belonged to both of us, the losing
of me that was so distinctly a part of him.
I don’t cry over the body.
I cry for the he—
harbinger of
my own
extinction.