Funeral directive from a serial monogamist
who never stopped looking for the one who would last
Come sit in the front row, darlings.
I hope you all can fit. Bring your boxed-up
photos, useless house keys, sad CDs.
Lay your offerings at my feet.
Place your grievances on pure white
paper, fold them into mourning doves
or cut them into snowflakes and let
a blizzard fly. I’ll keep still this time.
Pile a column of rocks in the corner
like that one we found in Algonquin.
Let it hold every sorrow, every regret
from this raggedy life.
Build a bulletin board of birch bark
from Fisherman’s Island. Find a photo
of the oak tree at Sleeping Bear Dunes
where you lost an earring in the sand.
Show the orange trees at Phoenix Airport,
the sandhill cranes at Baker Lake,
a West Virginia mountain cabin
with my mother’s pork chops in the oven,
that Sunday morning shower after church
when I shed my red silk dress—
well, maybe keep that one to yourself.
You know who you are.
Pick a preacher who’s heard of Meg Christian
or at least the Dixie Chicks. Choose scripture
on forgiveness, hymns of consolation.
Make grace seem irresistible.
At the end of the service take off my glasses
and lay them on the casket. Pretend
it’s a nightstand. Sing me to sleep.
—
Margaret DeRitter is the poetry editor and copy editor of Encore, a regional magazine based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She was a winner of the 2018 Celery City Chapbook Contest, sponsored by Kalamazoo’s Friends of Poetry, for her chapbook Fly Me to Heaven By Way of New Jersey. Her first full-length poetry collection is due out in 2020 from Unsolicited Press. Her writing has also appeared in the anthologies Surprised By Joy (Wising Up Press) and Queer Around the World (Qommunicate Publishing) and in a number of journals, including The 3288 Review, which nominated her poem “At the top of Sleeping Bear Dunes” for a Pushcart Prize. DeRitter has also written numerous magazine and newspaper articles. She worked for 22 years at the Kalamazoo Gazette and has taught journalism at Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College.
Photo by Derrick Brooks for Unsplash.com.
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