the funeral planner

Cover every mirror in the house. Tear one (1) garment.

Jewish ritual mourning is seven days of riding bareback

in the saddle of grief. 

I’ve spent 19 years sitting shiva for everyone not yet dead.

I grieve for
men on the street who haven’t already picked out
their shrouds, children walking dogs that will become
dog-faced Have you seen me? posters, the future lost
balloons that will break themselves from skinny-boned wrists.
The car keys I don’t yet own that I already plan on losing.

 I ask you,  Have you ever mourned your parents

 before they’ve even died? You say, No,

 no, smile at me like I’m telling you jokes.

I’m here to tell you I have, imagined already the poem
I’ll write for my father’s funeral, a broken-winged
pigeon of a thing. It’s why I can’t smile back at you when

you hint you’d like this friendship to go someplace 

warm for the winter-- you haven’t even begun reading, 

but I’ve already flipped to the last page of our book, 

and trust me, soft thing, you don’t

want to know how this one ends.