Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Garland, 2017 (Artist Website)
Photograph
Bury me in something made of wood.
Even if it takes decades, I want there to be a way out.
And whatever you do, no matter what the caretaker says,
please don’t bury me wearing a bra. Not even if
all the other dead women are doing it.
Don’t flatten my curls. I won’t need anything beautiful,
just the jealous wingspan of God’s eyelash.
When I was born the women in the town all fell
under fever spells, despite the snow already forming
on the fields, the buff and speckled ducks hiding out
in the priory’s stables. I bet even in the afterlife
this dark heritage will follow. Certain myths heard
in childhood will be confirmed as true. The one that says
Courtney Love auditioned for The Mickey Mouse Club
with a Plath poem about incest. The Chupacabra
who ripped its way through my Great Great Grandfather’s farm,
draining the blood from the bodies of cows.
Other than these, I will have nothing to show for myself
when Peter, with his necklace of fresh fish,
asks me how I lived. And even if I lie would he still see
how sometimes I wanted so badly to cyber bully
mean friends from high school. Or that I was never able
to love those who didn’t love me back.
Will he know that I enjoyed the bruising?
That despite the bruises I bought dresses, like maybe
someone would think of me on my knees
or running through tall grass and bramble. The kind of person
who likes wearing the wound. And when he asks
of what I saw, will I tell him of the sinkholes and swamps?
The complications of my father’s pocket watch?
Will I eventually settle on the plastic flamingos
that outnumbered the real flamingos ten to one?
How swift he will pull back the rope.
How mischievous the final miracle.
I can hear them all laughing, even now, in a nice way,
at my many misunderstandings. Can see the doors
I should have walked through, each greeting me
the way animals who return home,
greet one another for returning.