Sunk Cost Fallacy
I have seen a broken man
draped over his wife’s open
casket, shaking with sobs
until exhausted with shaking.
A girl animated my maladroit
clothes and drifted into
his Pontiac in a cloud
of brothers. I hate the place
where my parents are
not — the sprawling cemetery
in the suburbs even more
suburban than the ones I
grew up in. The cost of a view
of the city is to be cast
eternally from it, across
the lake and around
the corner from the storage
facility we’ve paid too dearly
ever to empty now,
where cardboard cuffs
disintegrate on hangers
denied their only function,
while dresses sheathed
in plastic lie draped
over my inheritance.
* * * * *
Winter the Rain
In the violet blush of dawn
you suffer without me,
who, sleeveless in the heat
of July’s last morning,
will be squeezing plums
in produce when your eldest
calls to say, “Dad’s
taking his last breath.”
Tell him to wait, I tell
my brother. Plums scatter.
Time must have elapsed
without speed traps
before I reached the door
and found my brother
looking resolute mid-stair.
As resolute as he appeared
when he gathered me
from the middle school
office. I had left my slip-on
shoes under my desk
because they were slip-off
too, and someone kind
fetched them for me so
I could winter the rain,
see our mother dead.