Methodology

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.