Life Traces - second iteration (and some third...)

initial edits

I dragged your dead body from a dream today -

rather a picture, an unbidden image.

But there you were, head hovering near my feet 

perspective projecting the rest of you 

away. 

Upon inspection

your insides were empty

The onion skin thin shellac brown membrane

a cicada's husk,

each connecting line of you traced perfectly as filigree.

Inside, the wind.

The perfect negative of where you once were -

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

But also your soul -

this too had stayed behind in my dream.

Before me, fleetingly intact, lay your epidermal mask

Translucent

Infinitely light.

Veined like a dried ginkgo leaf or

the pleasurable pulled-off layer of glue

a child has allowed to dry on her hand.

Infinitely thin.

But in the emptiness formed by this cask

I realized it wasn't just you - 

This trace of your skin held my father's ghost;

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

His eyes closed as in his casket

His arms crossed in front

Dressed in one of his beautiful suits, perfection in eternity.

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

Merging together

Appearing disappearing

As does a projection on smoke.

Gathered, they darted through apertures formed
by fissures or stretched openings in the translucent shellac of your case.

Only your spirit stayed away.

But of course -

You aren't dead yet.

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

So I laid it to rest, as I knew I should.

Goodbye undead.

Goodbye Baba.

Goodbye undead.

Before me now, my warm, stuffed,

sleep-breathing son. Long live life...