At the End by Marilyn L. Taylor
In another time, a linen winding sheet would already have been drawn about her, the funeral drums by now
would have throbbed their dull tattoo into the shadows writhing behind the fire’s eye
while a likeness of her narrow torso, carved and studded with obsidian
might have been passed from hand to hand and rubbed against the bellies of women with child
and a twist of her gray hair been dipped in oil and set alight, releasing the essence
of her life’s elixir, pricking the nostrils of her children and her children’s children
whose amber faces nod and shine like a ring of lanterns strung around her final flare--
but instead, she lives in this white room gnawing on a plastic bracelet as she is emptied, filled and emptied.
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