watching someone else’s funeral
feels like being caught with your hand
halfway into a cookie-jar. one time,
i was at the cemetary waiting
for the adults to stop lighting candles
on our relatives’ graves when i saw it—

a gaggle of women and children
and a freshly dug hole with
a casket being lowered in it. they
were solemn. i watched beside a tree
as the priest flung holy water down
into the open grave. thunder rumbled.
a woman stepped forward
and threw a flower in. the casket
was roughly someone my height; the men
at the edges of the crowd, holding
umbrellas and cameras, staring
at the ground. i wondered

what was it like for them? the woman
looked at me, and looked away.

it was very hard, i thought maybe
she might not want anyone else
to see this. i wondered—

if she could talk to whoever
was in that container again,
would she? what would it feel like? like
talking to someone across another country,
voices canned and static? i wonder if
her longing flew fast and rapid, like
currents on the powerlines. maybe

the grief was like abandon, the kind
you scream silently in your head, the car
you’re riding careening

down the highway, windows
open, your hair caressing the sides
of your face. i think of you

and your grief. what was i thinking,
thinking that i could pick you apart
and understand your sadness. i thought

you were crystalline under the scrutiny
of the streetlamps, but i guess
i was wrong. when i walk in the streets
hearing the hum of the powerlines, i
remember you in another country, and
most of all i remember grief:

that woman who lost that someone,
your scribbles in the middle of the night,
my drinking until early morning,
a funeral i shouldn’t have seen.

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