My Best Friend’s Funeral

I didn’t enter my best friend’s funeral, watched from the back instead. Rows of pews, hem to hem, packed like fish in ice, cold and dead.

Every rehab, a stuttering pause in your slow march to the box. Visited your place, saw your mom, her smile a mask, hiding loss.

That smile, a signal of what’s gone, trust, once a sliver, now dust. Her eyes empty, like a house robbed, betrayed, now earning mistrust.

Living room, a barren field, Newports spent, no flag, no shield. Each puff a soldier, numbing the feel. And that urine sample, unadorned, like a dead rat in the walls. A heavy stench of loss.

A hollow tribute, echoing the cost.