By: Claire Scott

We hold our dead hostage
Squeezing every memory
Every story every feeling
As though they were oranges
With eternal juice
Keeping faded photos
Old diaries– ways to keep
Them more alive than dead
Keep them hovering
Listening to us imagining
What they might
Say, repeating their
Stale jokes, malaprops
Words of wisdom
Long outdated in this age
Of baby monitors computers
Gay marriage & marijuana

What if we let go of the strings
Holding them here, let them
Float like helium balloons to
Wherever it is the dead go
Heaven, oblivion, a new life
As a toad or camel or perhaps
A flowering lilac
Free to fly on without
The pull of strings
The juice of oranges.