The Price of the End of It

But now it’s her stooped body in queue for the slab, 

her blessed temperature you’re fiddlin’ with, and God’s

holy directive shifts accordingly. Your mother holds 

the tasteful funeral home brochures an inch from her 

eyes until their horrible words unblur, shakes her head 

at the insane cost of the gilded, pall-borne tribute she truly 

craves, asks again for whatever’s cheap. May her Lord 

forgive you as you just keep shuffling that cremation info 

to the top of the pile. You remember how stupidly she 

bobs her napped head to the wagging finger of God, 

God again, always God, how resolutely she clutches 

all the bluish notes in gospel—for her, “the fire next 

time” is not a frugal means of disposing of soulless 

shells, it is payback for a life clawed together outside 

of her savior’s cold little classroom. Oh, never you mind 

the lesson she drilled into you after a handgun blasted 

your father out of the world, what she said to end your 

bouts of snot and fever, your worrisome new habits of 

snatching tufts of hair from your own head and screaming 

the onsets of dawn—Your daddy’s not in that ol’ body 

anymore— and you unrolled your eyes just in time to look 

that pliant, just in time to make her think you believed her.

Now that she has refused to the neat conclusion of ash,

you are thinking of all the damned reams of paperwork

glorious ceremony requires, the feel of scrawling your 

name over and over to officially end her. There will be too 

many syrupy, flowers draped over everywhere, the casket

lid flipped open, your oblivious mother’s vaguely 

whorish makeup job. You dread the hearse’s eerie creep 

through annoyed Ubers, the depressing pit, mourners 

sneaking cell snaps, taking note of your absence of ache. 

While this strange woman comparison-shops, zeroing in 

on the pauper’s special—Girl, what is a cloth casket?—

you remember years of screaming her name into a dead 

phone after she scrubbed her whole history of your needy 

little face. Now that she is frail and beholding, you should

demand that she answer for that kind of love. Or you

can love that way too. Go on. Throw a match into her hair.