Curtain (2nd draft)

I’ve seen you pull the coins
off your own eyes
to feed the parking meter.

I’ve seen you and the hemlock vendor
chatting idly by the door
to the stadium.

I’ve smelled a hint of cyanide on your breath
just before you popped a mint
and smiled weakly back at this life.

Maybe in your mind you always skipped the denouement
to get to the wake where people
congratulated you on how great you looked

in your someday best and painted skin.
So now, when we pull you blue and white from the water
and see you bloated here and shriveled there,

now when it’s clear that this time
it’ll be a closed box we’ll sit around
to speak of you, now I have to ask:

did all that dress rehearsal make it easier
to go down to the lake this last time,
or were you as scared for yourself

as we always were for you? Did you wonder
what we’d be saying now, or did it all pale
to white light as you sank away?

This is not the way I thought you’d go.
I expected us to laugh bitterly together
at all those attempted escapes one day.

And I may yet laugh
at you, at us, at this —
but not now, and not soon;

not as long as I can still imagine
your body, a sack of empty gestures,
pulled out to dry under a waning moon.