Waiting for planks to cure for your coffin
is like painting your own house over and
over. Dip your fingers in color, dot
your world: walls, floor, ceilings and doors pulsing
red and yellow and pink with your skin’s whorls.
Make hives of glass and watch bees build mazes.
Sweet talk women while they quilt the lining
for your awakening. Tell stories, eat
buttermilk pie, long for a future where
we’ll be together again. Baptism
at the river. Ferris wheels that never
stop spinning. Airplanes to carry us through
billowing fogs of Heaven. These are dreams
we’ve lost of skeletons trimmed in glitter.
Shannon Estlund, Mirror Pond (oil on canvas)