.
Reading the Dead
.
Sometimes at night I scour the net
looking for dead lovers
looking for old men
.
I look at their photos
on funeral sites
read the obits
.
wives and children
fulsome praises
the usual phrases
.
He was wonderful
He was special
He was beloved
.
Old wounds throb again
I don’t actually cry
but lie awake in the dark
.
Remembering just how
wonderful this one was
or how awful
.
And sometimes I wonder
before they died
late at night, once or twice
.
If they ever tried looking for me?
And say they did, what then?
How did that go?
.
They’d see I’m not at all fat
I’ve a beautiful cat
and several books
.
to my largely unknown
but beautiful name
that’s about it
.
Then do they think at all
of the damage done
of the shit that went down?
.
Can it be they just forgot?
My guess for what it’s worth
Probably not
.
Grace Andreacchi writes novels, plays, short stories and poetry. Works include the novels You Are There Behind my Eyelids Forever, Scarabocchio, Music for Glass Orchestra (Serpent’s Tail), Give My Heart Ease (New American Writing Award) and the chapbooks Ten Poems for the End of Time and Berlin Elegies. Her work has been published by Serpent’s Tail, the Permanent Press, and in many fine journals, as well as her own imprint, Andromache Books. She lives in London with her little cat, Mimì.
North of Oxford 