Willetta

Oh I was on my way to doing something else, 

You prop my eyelids up with toothpick thoughts

Thursday, shuffling feet on your cemetery lawn

Weeping about your skin, in your sleep you just slid it off

Just so you could get dressed up in this

Your nightgown of oak, your ribbons of roots

Is there nothing you want from me now, 

No help I could give but to lower you down?

Oh all your friends standing by waving greedy goodbyes

I've got nothing now I want to say

You wouldn't talk back anyway

And you know we won't do what you wanted us to

There ain't nothing here to celebrate

We're all worse of without you

At that feast in some two star hotel

I'm circling the room and mingling half stunned

Nauseous with the truth of it all

Knowing here the whole time this won't really fade

Now it just stays in our spines

Oh but we're all shaking hands offering condolences

Stories of some envied youth, less life threatening more moot

And our eyes they all drown, our tongues get wrung out

There ain't nothing here for us to taste that ain't bitter already

They warn us our reservation is up

It just seems so cruel

Like the parasites that eat your thoughts your plot gets covered up

By someone who never even knew you

Oh then the curtain comes down, the crowd it thins out

There's no reason now for us to stay

And we all hurry home, because it won't be long till we're in your place