death makes no effort at formalities

my mother wakes us at 8:35 on a Saturday in a hush my father is in the other room; there's no more time, we’ve slept enough my uncle is gone (and no one says why) his body is hours away and the funeral tomorrow at noon two hours to pack the car, i shiver and i rush; 10 hours of silent driving (and no one says why) we're there and cousins i haven't seen together in years share the same space, fit themselves onto the same sofa, arrange their bedding on the same floor; nobody comments that we are too close, as if around some hearth that flickers in and out of view and it feels so childish to think this feels like a sleepover that in another life, there'd be a movie and s'mores, night clothing and bonfire haze; core memories all the same. (and no one says why) my aunt passes out rosaries at dawn; chill of pajamas in a home not your own, chill of my uncle's skin in an open casket. i have so many other thoughts and none at all my most stoic cousin doesn’t know what to do with herself, she tells us memories of an uncle we saw once every few years and i watch myself clink beads with glass eyes; and i can feel my own existence, i can feel that the sun has set and risen again,

| Kanwal Ahmad

and all that separates us is amber and gold. and it’s a chilly michigan december when we drive out to the grave. my aunts are shaking and the rosary slips through my fingers with fragments of breath i’m wearing socks with flip-flops and i get them wet in the dew-soaked fresh-turned dirt and i am not sure how to process my father helping himself down to lower the plank with his eldest brother's body. what do you do when the dirt keeps falling on a face you knew from the day you were born? what do you do when there’s nothing else to be done except continue pouring the earth you come from onto another and praying that he and you, and you will be forgiven while the world turns?

we stand and watch over a depression in the earth and my father finishes his prayer and says it is time to go i take my aunt’s arm and we walk to the car it is still a chilly michigan december when it is over. i sense there’s something in the wind, that feels like tragedy’s at hand (and no one says why) saccharine sky, what a day to die where do i go from here?