The service is slap-dash. Hard not to believe
in signs and wonders when sun breaks sunken clouds
the second the pastor taps the mic, but his speech
is tone-deaf. Don’t speak to me of Jesus. I want to remember.
Death makes parents of children and children of parents.
See my father and his brother in sleeping bags on the floor
of their father’s house. See my grandfather never alone.
For dinner, they feast on steak, chicken, chips, salsa and guac,
grown men turned little boys rogue in the kitchen.
I drive my family to the service. My mother cries in the backseat.
In the box in the ground, hand-hewn by my uncle the carpenter,
beside my grandmother’s ashes, her requests:
a TJ Maxx-looking necklace still in cellophane packaging
that says “Gratitude” in cheap nickel. Her 40-year AA chip.
Livia Daggett is a copy editor by night and a senior at the University of Pittsburgh studying writing and philosophy. She has previously been published in Imposter: A Poetry Journal. She loves to read, knit, and provide overbearing care to her houseplants.