Requiem for the Grandiose

©1997 Susan Noyes Anderson, The Comstock Review

The day you killed me, I thought––What a drag––
and started making funeral arrangements.
I’d deal with all the requisite estrangements.
If dying was the task, then I’d die fine.
“A wooden casket?” No, I’d take the steel.
They rust? All right, then make mine copper, please.
“Impervious,” they crowed. That worked for me.
Off-white, of course, with roses at the crown.
Let it be said, “She always stopped to smell them.”
The eulogy? (Could this have been poor taste?)
Who better to deliver it than me?
Though dead, I eulogized myself so well,
that people barely noticed I was gone;
though later some were sorry to conclude
that I had failed––sometimes they felt the loss.

And resurrection did exceed my grasp.

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