Life Traces - final(ish)

I dragged your dead body from a dream today -

rather a figment, an unbidden image.

But there you were, head hovering at my feet 

perspective projecting your limbs  

away. 

Upon inspection

your insides were empty

The onion skin thin shellac brown

a cicada's husk,

filigree of meticulously traced membranes.

Inside, the wind.

A precise negative of where you once were 

You: your organs bones  arteries intestines muscles cartilage blood bile nerves veins.

But also your soul -

these remained behind in the dream.

Before me, fleetingly intact, lay your epidermal mask, shed

Translucent

Veined like a dried ginkgo leaf or

the pleasurable pulled-off layer of glue

a child has let dry on her hand.

Then in the vacancy formed by this cask

I recognized faces.

My father's ghost took residence;

once large, now scaled down to fit the space of you in comfort.

His eyes closed as in his coffin

His arms crossed in front

Dressed in one of his beautiful suits, prepared for eternity.

Dancing on him were the fragment images of every man between.

Merging together

Disappearing appearing 

As do projections on smoke.

Gathered, they darted through apertures formed
by fissures or stretched openings in the translucent shellac of your case.
I asked them: how long have you been there?
Since we parted, they answered as one.

And only your spirit stayed away.

But of course -

You aren't dead yet.

Lying before me, this mold for you was the cicada shell of my desire.

So I attempted to lay it to rest, as you've ordered I should.

Goodbye undead.

Goodbye Baba.

Goodbye undead.

Before me now, my warm, stuffed,

sleep-breathing son. Long live life...