{"id":10815,"date":"2021-11-07T18:49:29","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T01:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=10815"},"modified":"2021-11-07T18:49:29","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T01:49:29","slug":"coffins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=10815","title":{"rendered":"Coffins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Adele Gardner<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\nThis Halloween the old man picks out coffins.\n\nHis parlor looked bare without one: so many years in which\n\nanother relative died, and he sat nights\n\ncommuning with the dead.  So peaceful, it didn't even matter\n\nwhether he spoke or watched, but by candlelight\n\nthere was plenty of time to get it all off his chest,\n\napologize to his daughter, his niece, his grandson, for birthdays missed;\n\nchew out his son for running away and leaving the business to crumble;\n\ntell his sweethearts precisely how he loved them.\n\nHis wife was hardest--almost as bad as Mom, when he was ten.\n\nThey're all gone, now.  He sits alone,\n\nmissing the coffins--company.\n\nOne last ritual to cling to.\n\nThe dead don't speak, exactly, but they fill silences,\n\npregnant with answers you can almost pluck from the air,\n\na little overripe with waiting, but pungent, sweet,\n\nan earthy taste like the forbidden fruit\n\njust the other side of the grave.\n\nHe misses the tinkle of his granddaughter's laughter, there in the silence,\n\nthe eloquent press of dust that traced his name\n\nabove her on the mantle, the titter of mice\n\nscampering over her toes and down the legs of the coffin,\n\nbrushing him with silken whiskers like her hair\n\nso that he reached out, tried to touch one,\n\ncaught just a fingertip taste of one silky, eiderdown cheek--\n\nthe same as hers, but soft, as it had been when she grew old,\n\nstill warm, not hard as that withered figure in her casket.\n\nSo, for one moment, lifted in hope, he believed her:\n\nthat she'd still be here to look out for him; that love never dies.\n\nPerhaps it's true.  Now he's the last, and two\n\nhundred years seems too long a span--\n\nthough too short to contain all the hours he wanted\n\nto spend with them, all these branches from the same root, each unique,\n\nand for his love too brief, too brief.\n\nHe'll order one more coffin now,\n\ndrape it in plush black velvet, paint it pumpkin-rich orange,\n\nlie down for a nap on Halloween, the one night when his parlor\n\nis still crowded with chatter\n\nfrom the coffins long gone by.  Perhaps this time\n\nhe'll slip over to the other side--not in his sleep, but setting out to sea,\n\npushing off at last into the waves by the light\n\nof a wavering lantern.  He's so excited.\n\nHe can't wait for them to join him,\n\ncrowding his parlor with delight in their coffin-ships\n\nto pull him out from shore.\n\n <\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adele Gardner This Halloween the old man picks out coffins. His parlor looked bare without one: so many years in which another relative died, and he sat nights communing with the dead. So peaceful, it didn’t even matter whether he spoke or watched, but by candlelight there was plenty of time to get it all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10817,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10815\/revisions\/10817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}