“hell halfway twixt now and then.” - grateful dead

when one day the good lord calls me yonder
and all but my hair and fingernails is still
when every action of mine transforms into past-tense verbs
when i become a wispy vapour haunting minds
imprisoned to a dozen or so pages
when my body becomes a temple of coldness
the doctor pulls the sheet over my head.
(i now laugh at when i used to hide under the covers

to read; i knew more then than i do now)
when my family throws me in the back of an SUV

and has a death parade in my honour
when the mortician puts on make-up and a suit that, in life,

i could never afford
and everyone i ever knew files past me on the way to the salad bar
as the pallbearers finally realize how fat i was.
when they drop me into a ditch and cover me with dirt.
i wonder if anyone will notice that i’m dead.