Before Snapping

Now as a figure
of checkered skin,
you had clenched stone
fingers tapping,
temples made
of concrete
that scraped my
hands as I
checked for moisture
and wrong temperatures.

It was not long
before the earth
let your body
be moved,
a monument
being bombed by
several thousand
liquid pounds
of nitric acid
(actually, it was just
a lone wanderer,
the stratocumulus
charging from
the south,
it's iced head
rearing, getting
ready to rewind
you, to repair you.).

I watched head
collapse to heart,
heart melt to steam,
and steam drift
like exhaust
further into
the disheveled square.

But it was strange.
Your fingers had
failed to decay
any further than
what age had already
done, and after
your torso crushed
itself, your fingers
began to slip down,
to fall off,
small chunks, remains,
and instead of
lingering at the base
of your heels,
they rolled away
into brick crevices
clinking together
like our old whiskey
glasses, a set
of eight or nine
crude jointed,
knuckles knobby
and nails filed.

The last digit
hung on several
seconds before
snapping, it’s descent
finding gravity,
finding my palm,
my pocket.

I walked home
thinking about Chaucer
and his own tales,
and the Chinese
restaurant where
I can't go alone,
and as I wandered
from block to block,
fingering the trinket
you had left me,
and that giant
cloud bursting itself
on more people's lives
miles away,
I wondered
about building a
rock garden, about
digging a shrine.