DEAD PEOPLES STUFF FOR SALE

There’s a box on the market stall,
which holds
(in a jumble of price tags, hiccups and unused apostrophes)
the selfies,
voice files,
electrograms,
and other assorted items,
which belonged
to people like you.

Some of them
belonged to you too.

You feign surprise
and remind me
that you're not like those people!
Because you're not dead yet.
And all the prices are wrong.
You ask me to inform the stall holder
that the rates on the tags
affixed to your assets
will probably have to be raised
afterwards.

We inspect the box together
and play a guessing game:
what is the face of the buyer?

DEAD PEOPLES STUFF FOR SALE

Who’ll buy:
the postcards from places that you’ll never travel to,
the effigies of gods that you’ll never get to adore,
the urgent letters that will never reach the nurse,
the names of new lovers you won’t make love to,
the pieces of flesh that once were your lungs,
the catheters, the bandages, the bags of urine,
the moles, the noes and the snores?

Moles printed on your yellow skin,
noes shouted in the middle of the night,
snores uttered between No! and No!
And the hiccups.

When we watch the videos of you,
from those days
when the white
on the white
of your eyes
was pure white,
and I joke
that your face is now fit
for Halloween,
all I can think is:
‘I’m already missing you.’

DEAD PEOPLES STUFF FOR SALE

You refuse
to estimate the price
of your nose, nipples,
penis, fingers, smiles,
lips, ears, profile updates
and other bits of you that will come out intact.

You hold on
to a priceless
possession:
the fountain pen
that you’ll never use
to jot
the notes
for a poem
that you’ll never write.