My Response to my Two-Year-Old Daughter’s Question at the Funeral

“My life is a parody of a tragedy.”
— Hamlet 2

My mouth spat dust
Because the absolute strangeness of dying
Defied the singsong of my daddy timbre.
Shadow can be recast,
But absurdity sits in the stomach,
An overturned rock groaning and rheumatic,
And all the solid black of the catholic funeral mass
cannot keep the waters of parody from
Seeping in through the mortar of the skin.
I eyed a box labeled for the dead
Tucked behind a garbage can,
Smelled the disdain of a long winter
On lingering knees,
Heard the sobbing of a man over broken wedding vows,
And gagged on laughter.
Facing her, ashes and dust caught in my throat
In a great comic wheeze, a ghost passing in the valley
Fearing no evil, but something worse.