This is a poem about that night.
It could be about my mother,
my father,
my brother,
or my man
because all died
in the dead of night.
For a long time, it was getting ready
to happen
and then it happened
at the exact time when nothing
was going to happen.
They all got that dry nose and
startled look, light dimming from day to night,
to the very dead of night,
one by one, decades apart, all got that puzzled look,
a match flame in the iris,
bodies mushed as pumpkins in June,
becoming the ground,
placed in their boxes–my people,
now the fruit that sweetens
my compost.
