Toilette for a Suicide

The perfect skirt.
Arguably tintable, its pleated/
fluted/ruched ziggurat posed in a rigid tarantella.

It would have suited
Marie Antoinette in a snit,
a berserker in drag, a haruspex in mid-

augury, draped with entrails.
Its frozen dance made an unseemly
traversal of dusty varnish glittering with desiccant.

She would dye it black.
Or rose-petal. Maybe tie-dyed. Probably.
She could see herself, delicately pale, artistically

sprawled across her violet
chenille bedspread. She’d wear the net
of garnet beads that gleamed like a spatter of pustules

across her breasts,
the magenta lace fingerless gloves,
paisley stockings, the heavy, buckled boots. Naked

from the waist up; that
would show them. She imagined the preachy,
predictable blare of the classroom announcement,

the trite lies
of the obituary. Boring. Where
would she be by this time tomorrow? Hans had said

what was left
in the bottle would be enough,
more than enough. “Wait for me,” she breathed.

She envisioned variant
possibilities: the fading ripples of the last
electric pulse through neurons; subatomic particles—

gluons?—moving out
along cosmic pathways; a small boat—
a punt?—setting out down the unknowable river,

Tunnel of Love arcing in neon
from black shore to black shore. She pulled
the door open, entered the thrift store’s stale, cool air.

©2006 F.J. Bergmann

"Toilette for a Suicide" appeared in Margie #6.

Next  Poetry  Home