Weighing the Consequences

Stephanie Kapinos

I am looking down
My twenty-year-old body 90 pounds
Tubes wrapped around my face
Into my nose
My stomach
My arm
Clear, plastic, external veins.
A crumpled organ hissing
Up and down
Inspiring my lungs.
Artificial support surrounding me.

My mother
My Father
Stand silent.
One gown into another
Blue cotton to white silk.
Brush the wisps of hair
From my unwhispering lips,
Lay me on a bed of tulips
As I enter the fire
Years of coldness dissipate
Taking the flesh away
Dispersing my cells into vapor.
If only I could weigh the ashes
Sit proudly on my kitchen scale,
Measure myself in ounces and grams
As I’ve done bit by bite
For the last several years.
I smile as I think –I’m in single digits.

The lungs of the world expel me
While something, or nothing, breathes me in.
All 2 ounces scatter
Breezing against skin
My last touch,
At last, I have become the nothing
I have always been.

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