This is Ben, I’m not home right now

A pile of you in the bottom of your tub Is all that was left after you flung yourself Unflinching, into the void.

Glassy-eyed and cold of skin, arms Floppy and useless. One last breath Of dead air, locked inside your lungs.

Placed with loving care and infinite gentleness into a cardboard box, A plastic bag under your head to prevent the fluid that once carried your thoughts and dreams From seeping into the pillow.

The cloying odor of freshly painted walls joins hands With the image of your mouth firmly closed, your lips gummed together. Your father snips at your hair and lashes and beard that your mother may have some last wasted trinket, he bends over you and kisses the cold marble façade that was your face, perhaps remembering the one he last looked upon some twenty-three long years ago.

The furnace beckons with stupid hunger. You do not feel The flames lapping over you, disintegrating with mindless purpose your wrecked humanity. You cannot Feel the weight of a nine-pound box of ash in your mother’s lap where the ghost of an eight-pound baby boy still lies, little hands on fat stalks of arms reaching in alert wonder for her face.

Tonight I’d conjure you if I could. If I knew of ancient words to utter, I’d summon you whole from the churning pit of my stomach, sew you together from your favorite shirts, build you out of clay and mold you back to form. Could I but render you solid from a faded photograph, pluck you from my monitor where you dance and caper and laugh, reconstitute your flesh from the elusive dust your stuff became, I’d scream in your ears and clench your face in my hands, bury my nose in your hair and wrench you, kicking and clawing, back into now.