The ladies asked us to leave
the room while they prepared her body;
the kitchen floor was a network
of congruent polygon perimeters:
hexagons and squares, or octagons?
When she had choked on her last breath
a comet lept out of her lips
into a shadow that opened
in the corner of the ceiling.
No one realized the morticians
would have to reverse into
the driveway. For moments, no one
noticed the hearse’s louspeaker
and its hymns for the whole neighborhood.