Prisco, Mark

death and after

1. Those weeks alone in her flat were difficult.
2. It was cold and I got sick after the funeral.
3. I had sat on a plane for hours, straight and
4. by the time I wound the tortuous roads in-
5. land to up-stream Latium, I had been
6. on the road, for about 40 hours. It was good
7. to get clean at last and eat the rough Sabine food,
8. a hot winter soup and hard bread and beans and pork,
9. and good drink. I got dropped off and opened her door
10. for the first time in more than a year. There was
11. no-one there and I felt, what? I slept on her bed
12. curled in a ball. I was cold but I slept like the dead –
13. good, down for the first time in two days. I saw her
14. lying flat in the morning, flowers on her breast;
15. and later at the church and last, the beautiful
16. cemetery by the monastery of St Francis
17. at Fontecolombo: the Dove’s Fountain. The ceremony
18. of a digger filling the grave troubled me. A friend
19. put her arm round me, and later in the week she came
20. with her husband to see me, and I was so out of it,
21. nodding on the chair, laughing occasionally.
22. I remember. The family doctor had been… supportive.
23. It was cold and not quite winter. The end of November –
24. when pigs btw get slaughtered. She used to run, run
25. from the farm as a little girl and block her ears.
26. I understand this and try hard not to care.
27.  
28. I want to tell her now that she is not a cold
29. set of bones buried underground in her soiled
30. gown. It’s for the scientist to strip us down,
31. bare of, or to a bare root of, meaning. We dig
32. past the facts I think. But, they write the books
33. I will read some day, dying and senile, and declare
34. my atheism in support, a last stupid act
35. of defiance. Now, I want to tell her that she lives
36. for real and for good – not just in some metaphor
37. I thought up, which is really nothing at all. I recall
38.  
39. one morning how the wind cut through my clothes
40. on my way to see, vaguely, an office clerk in town.
41. I had to take care of some business, a lot more
42. than I care for. Friend, I felt so cold. Those weeks
43. in the flat are like a dream to me now. I disposed
44. of her clothes. You know how that feels, or imagine.
45. I kept her winter shawl and her dressing gown. Took them
46. home.
47.  
48. 11 October 2015