Bath

I preferred Mozart to Verdi – his score

seems to satisfy the tearful sentiment,

human-friendly, providing pity –

to the sobriety of chords you have chosen

 

I preferred you with the respiratory tube

forced down your throat (what were you thinking)

to you laid out, still, light shell, harmless

or a weighty hollow armour – unarmed

 

leaving a shrivelled heart with a cordial gesture

a waxen masquerade dropped on a crisp pillow

weary ventricles and watery lungs,

a certificate of you passing – what?

 

that night I saw a grandiose body

of a dead whale stuffed into the back of a truck,

the first time my body, fully weighted

gravitated to the enamel after the plug was pulled

© Agnes Lehoczky 2006