"The Day of the Funeral"- by Anonymous

storiesteenslove

10 hours ago

1 min read

We are peeling clementines at the kitchen table

while rain climbs the windows like ivy, and my brother

is laughing with his whole bright mouth, throwing rind

after rind into the sink, its little enamel throat.

Somewhere upstairs our mother folds towels over and over,

each one warm and white as a small undressed flag,

and the clock raises its small blunt axe. Outside, a fox slips

through the yard with its red grief,

and the lilacs make their dumb purple argument with spring.

From the porch, Father calls us in before the dark. Lit by the kitchen’s

weak gold, we carry plates, spoons, the bruised apples from the counter,

all our ordinary offerings. I would still like the day to reverse its small machinery:

rind to fruit, fruit to blossom, blossom to the hard green fist of beginning.

Would still like you. Later, when night fills the hallways with its black milk,

I lie awake beside the soft machinery of my own heart,

hearing my mother cough behind her door, my brother

turning in his sleep like a page. What we cannot bear

is a country we enter by touch: a hand

reaching across the table, the last orange split open,

its little sun burning between us.