Coffins for Two

A long time, before any of us were born, a storm married a funeral. I’d like to think it was a beautiful ceremony, that lightning crashed in time with mourners’ wailings, that thunder boomed at the moment the body was lowered into the dirt. That the sky opened up, tears falling from the clouds as the deceased was laid to rest for the very first time. The couple gets together every time somebody dies it seems.

It’s not raining now, though, as they throw your body into the clay. There isn’t a single cloud in the sky, just the pale blue and the Texas heat. The rain is streaming down my cheeks, starting in my bloodshot eyes, falling to the cracked earth. It’s a poor substitute for the real thing.

Maybe they got a divorce, the storm and the funeral, or maybe they’re in couples’ therapy. Or maybe the storm knows no amount of thunder and lightning will be enough to do the sorrow of losing you justice. The heavens themselves could crash into the planet, a violent flood of the cosmos destroying this rock we call home, and it wouldn’t be enough.

The radar gives a one hundred percent chance of precipitation tonight, the kind of thunderstorm you deserve on the horizon. It won’t come from the sky, however, but the bottle. An amber flood, a symphonic hurricane composed of whiskey, the kind that can level cities and move mountains. The kind we used to sail through together.

Sunlight is beating me to a pulp as I watch everyone else walk away from your new grave. The bottle is in my car, seven hundred fifty milliliters of potent liquor that I intend to dive into later, the small ship of my body crashing into the ochre waves until it’s swept into and under the current. That near-future drowning has already been pushed out of my head, though.

All I can think right now is I wish they made coffins for two.