The Still Face Experiment 

You must have seen that Youtube clip 

where a mother lets her face go dead. 

Her toddler carries on burbling for twenty to thirty seconds until she realises there is nothing coming back to her. 

After you died,
someone asked:
What was it like
in those final sixteen days
waiting for your son to die?

I imagine returning to the house.
Furniture is piled up in the rain—
the ideas that won’t fit.

I used to dial your number to hear your voice. I would hold the receiver for a long time as if your voice was trapped inside . . .

Shove it, that farewell
and the sky shimmering with frost
and the waves wrecking on the shore

Tom’s advice, mind you,
was to drink hot chocolate
last thing at night
on a garden bench
beneath the moon.

Today, I talked with a friend about death
and what it means to have arrived in my life
before I have to leave it . . .

they said sing in private,
Zan shouldn’t sing.

The train is the way,
the tracks a scar cut
deep in the land
you can’t help but touch.