Flies’ Goodbyes

We met, we bartered, we pricked at a dead fly with needles.
The papery light above us, a hangout for living cousins.
Or perhaps he looks down on us now again,
already reincarnated.

All with gnashed teeth, insane smiles, buzzing …

Damn them.

Small hairs on my husband’s head, balding,
an ecosystem of Knowledge,
where generations of little flies all alight.
But my husband is already dead,
sweetly fragranced of rot.
They, always happy,
each corpse to them, an oblong planet
of nourishment, carbon and fun,
and Death, a game they always win.

Damn them.

His tombstone is half empty,
my cancer is winning,
I am unable to bathe,
and so no one visits me, but them.

I am damned.

 

Written by 

Neesa Suncheuri works as a mental health peer specialist at a housing agency in Queens, New York. She is the founder of a Facebook discussion group for peer specialists and other recovery enthusiasts, entitled “What is Wellness? A Mental Health Discussion Group.” She also maintains a blog called Unlearning Schizophrenia, and is a regular contributor of poetry and fiction at Organic Coffee, Haphazardly. She is also a singer/songwriter, and an enthusiast of the German language and culture.

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