The Girl Imagines His Funeral Is a Fairy Tale – Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick

In the mouth of the wake,
mourners pass by in their dark

clothes like pinned wings.
When it is over,

the man is carried to the field house.

Among the silver seeds,
I buried a set of keys

in what was once a riverbed
gone dry. Now,

in my hands, two divining rods
made for his chest. I find,

when I cut him open, rocks
& shells, little things

I tucked away, small treasures
to mark the passing

of my childhood. I kept a record
of when, like a tree, I grew

around a wound. I made him carry,
his body pearling, the trinkets

until, transformed, I take them back.

Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Gulf Coast Journal, The Texas Observer, The Missouri Review, Four Way Review, Salamander, Sixth Finch, and Passages North, among others. Hardwick serves as the Editor-in-Chief at The Boiler.