Sometimes it only took a single word, <br />just a look if they had drunk enough. <br />A hawkbill knife would flash, sometimes a gun. <br />The doctor closed their eyes and it was done. <br /> <br />That's when they'd come for me so I would walk <br />until I found some men out in a yard <br />smoking cigarettes, looking at the ground, <br />the women in the house with the dead man's wife. <br /> <br />They'd have him laid out on a cooling board, <br />looking like he'd passed out drunk, but then <br />you saw the shirt dyed crimson with his blood, <br />a face as white as August cotton bolls. <br /> <br />We'd strip the body first. The younger girls <br />who hadn't known a man were curious. <br />They might giggle, childish as the men <br />who'd brought us here with their little boy games. <br /> <br />As soon as I could get him shaved I'd leave <br />and wouldn't come back until a few weeks passed. <br />That's when she'd need the hugs, the sugared words, <br />some extra help with supper and the kids. <br /> <br />By then she'd have an inkling, not so much <br />of what had happened but what was to come. <br />By then she'd know that she would grow old young. <br />By then she'd know her man was the lucky one.<br /><br />Ron Rash<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/preparing-the-body/
