Poem: 'Grief's Cliche'

I have only one prompted poem to offer today for February, and it was written in March.

Another that I wrote was too personal (naming names). I submitted still another for publication (with the assurance it was otherwise unpublished), and the last of the weekly prompts I received from my poetry Patreon was a reading, rather than writing, assignment.

The prompt for the poem below was simply, "How is your body a mausoleum of flowers?"

"Mausoleum of Flowers" is the title of this poem by Daniel B. Summerhill, and the image had special meaning to me as I contemplated the funeral and burial of my uncle on March 2.

For the past week, I couldn't get this short poem out of my head. I kept thinking of the roses pictured here, the ones gathered in front of the altar of Sacred Heart Church in Clifton and later placed upon the grave at Calvary Cemetery in Paterson. This was my first draft:

Missing You

I pricked my finger on the rose
I cast atop your grave.

My droplet of blood,
camouflaged by the buds
the others threw on you.

Then you were hidden too;
your body, a mausoleum of flowers.

While each of us beheld
the shorn beauty of your life
and pretended we would live forever.

---------

And this is where I landed (revised, 3/24/23):

Grief's Cliche

The rose I cast upon your coffin
is scent-less in the dead winter’s cold.

Thorns, rendered painless;
my fingertips, numb.

Curiously, I see a timid trickle of my blood
mix with the petals already covering you.

Then, lost in red, you are hidden too:
Your body, a mausoleum of flowers.

I exhale. A puff of air dissipates like incense.

My life shorn, my body suspends itself.

Lungs empty, I kill time at your grave.

I crave belief, yet question all truths:

This pretense I am sharing
a final breathless moment with you.