Resurrection Party
You ask me to take the Christ costume
out of the closet. It’s been a year
since your consciousness went
missing—stunned out of you
into the road: collision of machine & boy,
no pulse in your wrists, your ghost
gasping. Crash doesn’t capture it: your halo
ringing as it bounced from gutter
to sidewalk, singing down concrete
end over end. I wonder, did you throw
your shoulder against your eyelids, wanting
to burst through those last slits
of light? Your recollection of this
is dead, as is the seven days
after. Yes, the neuro-surgeons were pleased
when you answered: your name, the year, but didn’t
know your whereabouts. You told us in nature, lying
hazily in chirping forest, or at a tattoo parlor
getting ink on your abdomen: the half-arch
of a rainbow. Sometimes, you’d remember
you’re in the neuro ICU & we’d
celebrate. Funny—the detachment of body
and brain. I smile when I see the party photos
you post online: you, dressed as Christ,
thorny crown, death metal makeup,
bottle of Hennessey in your hand.
-orig. published in Tinderbox Poetry
