(Death mints at the funeral home.)

Sucking on peppermints and lacerating
expensive tissues, we crack jokes over
Richard’s body.
They are all in poor taste.
 
Mouth stretched wide enough to pull a soul through,
it is easier to look at the pictures that
line the side of the funeral parlor,
at familiar faces with strange haircuts.
I try on their expressions;
I recognize the fabled pets of my mother’s childhood.
 
I eat another mint.
Then a third.
 
“He was a difficult man.”
My father grew up playing with action figures,
so he is used to plastic men in boxes.
 
I go on secret missions upending vase after vase
of mints.
I pick out all the “death mints,”
the ones with peaceful looking trees
and doves drawn on them
in green ink.
 
A sign asks us to please keep all food
in the designated area for food.
I wrap mints in tissues.
I sneak them into my father’s coat pocket.
I do not have a plan for what I will do with them.
 
At the front of the room I listen to my cousin tell me about his daughter,
“She saved my life.”
We don’t acknowledge the body.
 
At the back of the room Richard listens to my aunt cry extravagantly
and I make plans to get drunk
with Carol “I ate two cheese sticks before this” Miller
after the viewing.
 
In death Richard enjoys proximity to flowers that
he would have been allergic to in life.
I wish that he could have died in his house full of cans.
I would take all his flowers and replace them
with bouquets of Campbell’s and Chef Boyardee;
I would line his coffin with
post-it notes and recycled plastic cutlery
and old pizza boxes.
 
There is a picture of a mountain beside the corpse,
and I imagine that Richard is a tin can man,
unrusted in the sun.
 
I close my eyes.
I eat another mint.