The Criers

In the parking lot,

across the street

from the window

of the prison

that I call my job,

there are people

who park their shabby cars

and migrate slowly,

painfully,

to the building.

They wear wigs or

scarves over their heads

and weary expressions.

Hollow eyes and frailty.

I am often fraught

with a morbid curiosity

to know what they've done

to be sentenced to such a hell.

But I know that

no one chooses a death

by such design -

death does the choosing.

Miles away, women weep

at the open casket

of a socialite's solitary son,

the boy who walked on the Earth

without ever touching the ground.

They are professional criers,

hired specifically to cry

for the unloved and unpopular

at funerals,

so as to give the impression

of value, of importance.

Tear-duct mercenaries.

I take mincing steps

so as not to awaken the household

and wander out into

the darkest hour,

unaware of my impending destiny

rising up to meet me in the wind.

Strange, they'll say -

She was always a strange girl.

And I will laugh from my posthumous position

in the back of a church I never attended,

witnessing the funeral of a girl

no one ever really knew.

And the criers,

dressed in black from head to toe,

will throw themselves on the casket

and sob inconsolably

and make me look like Van Gogh,

only appreciated in death.

And I'll laugh,

and maybe cry a little, too.