How death holds a body:
With hands of salt water that go anywhere.
Your heart swims in death’s hands,
its rhythm drowned,
exit mark on your chest like a sand dollar.
How a body dies:
It must recede into its center,
like a TV screen contracting into a dot.
That spark of static, a small noise,
and then everything black.
Published on the West Side Books website, 2004
©Beth Partin 2004. All rights reserved.
