Dear Physics, A Eulogy Request In Advance

dear physics, a eulogy request in advance

Aaron Freeman, can your physicist come to my funeral too and explain my own dispersal? in my head i see them standing by the ashes talking about the metaphor this funeral represents- the spreading of what’s left of me, the explosion of my infinitesimal self into everything else. or maybe that’s just the poet in me, making up things as i go. they’ll probably stand and say we are all made of molecules, and matter before we ever even begin to considered cells, the division of life into life with or without kernels before nucleus comes neutrons spinning in the centre of things all the biologists will have a fit. but they’ll still wait with one hand on the urn, and say biology can’t comfort you like this will. say something about the law of conservation of mass (you were anything before you were this and you are everything after this until all the edges). something about stardust. dispersion, refraction into light. your physicist takes a seat at my funeral and i’m hoping it’s a comfort and not another reminder that i am in a thousand other places except for here. my english teacher mother tells them to restate their thesis and conclude in different words; your physicist and i know this is all in my head because funerals are for the living, and when this all happens i will be six days dead burned past the point of no recognition into the point of disintegration my bones fused together and crackling with delight, decomposing cells wicked away with flame- your physicist gets up again, walks so slow up the middle of the row to say i have done two funerals today, one for a catastrophe and one for an atrophy. someone once told me they could feel themselves slipping away. someone once told me there was an explosion implosion inside their curled up lungs every time they tried to breathe. a finger in the ashes and your physicist lists off its chemical composition to the mark, using words like the element of surprise or eloquence or a rare one, a smile. somewhere within these molecules they say there was a person once, twice, forever and now they can never die. or what’s left of them at least, is that us or an eternity, not until the ends of everything. the physicist sits down, science in their lap like a bible or a comfort. i am not here to witness but if i were scattered to the winds in my own fragility i would think even your physicist might cry if they come to the funeral.

COUSINS IN THE SUMMER

red lipstick & chlorine. a flower headband. eight dollars on the dresser with bobby pins crossed for luck. bathing suits & the smell of sunscreen, an almost rainstorm walking home. the sound before the thunder comes crashing in, that empty silence. & then: the rain.

like a sunrise in reverse

i could believe in a fate / where none of

this happened / there are worse things

/ than making it up as we go / than

headlights driving south / and a song

like waves crashing into a cliff /

singing of oblivion / and the hope inside

it / the way the headlights / shine down

the road in front of us / curving around

the mountainside / we drive into the

abyss / and we are swallowed by the light

/ of passing possibility / eighty miles an

hour / headlights / glorious and merciful

and bright.

DEPARTING FROM THIS LIFE

this leaving is not fire or burning or catastrophe; instead a hung rope, knotted with careful precision a blade cut deep enough but not too deep. quiet. gentle. drawn out like a noose wrapped around a thin neck. frantic gasps of breath like starting to drown, the thought that you can breathe water and the ache inside of flooded lungs. everything in this world will one day drown. from love or from absence a lack of oxygen with a knife’ precision cutting through, you with the sad eyes know what this means this leaving, how it is a loss of air in a void no fires can burn don’t call this a catastrophe-destruction, and i cannot tell if the word i am looking for to describe this is tragedy or eventually and i am not sure of the difference in between.

say hello to god for me if you find him in your patterns

10011 / 1 / 11010

1000 / 101 / 1100 / 1100 / 1111

10100 / 1111

111 / 1111 / 100

110 / 1111 / 10010 1101 / 101

1001 / 110 11001/1111/10101

110 / 1001 / 1110 / 100

1000 / 1001 / 1101

1001 / 1110

11001 / 1111 / 10101 / 10010

10000 / 1 / 10100 / 10100 / 101 / 10010 / 1110 / 10011

you are waiting in between. ans Meer- to the ocean.

excerpt? wip