by Jeremy Wayne Couch
The call came early in the morning
She's gone . . . Come home
So I went home to help clean up the mess
Just as I had when Grandfather had left
I had been two years younger then
I can hardly believe there are those
Given the task at an even more tender age
The evidence confronts me now--my sister
Who has only twelve years
Experience to my twenty
She can't understand
Why God, in His neatness,
Has swept away her tiny, grey
Grandmother
How could He have found offense
In one so small and inconspicuous?
I pause in my work
Letting the sheet float down to gently caress
the mattress of the bed my grandmother Had slept in
The bed that was my sister's
and will be again unless she now finds it
Strangely cold
I smile at her and say
"When I am finally bored
with Life and decide to die,
let my skeleton unzip this flesh
and dance naked upon my grave!
I won't care!
My soul will be free
and building sandcastles
on the far shore
of the river Styx!"
My sister returns my smile and
Together
We finish making the bed