Not Poetry Thursday, because even though the sun is shining, it's dark

 OBIT
 ~Victoria Chang

The Blue Dress—died on August 6,

2015, along with the little blue flowers,

all silent. Once the petals looked up. 

Now small pieces of dust. I wonder

whether they burned the dress or just

the body? I wonder who lifted her up

into the fire? I wonder if her hair

brushed his cheek before it grew into a

bonfire? I wonder what sound the body

made as it burned? They dyed her hair

for the funeral, too black. She looked

like a comic character. I waited for the

next comic panel, to see the speech

bubble and what she might say. But her

words never came and we were left

with the stillness of blown glass. The

irreversibility of rain. And millions of

little blue flowers. Imagination is having

to live in a dead person’s future. Grief is

wearing a dead person’s dress forever.

Copyright © 2018 Victoria Chang. Used with permission of the author.