The Urban Poetess

My photo albums feed
Online obituaries.
And my yearbook is full
Of platitudes and prayers
I no longer believe.

Faces flicker in the dark,
The light never catching fully.
Synapses firing through caverns.
Memories etched on cave walls.
A smile -
A laugh:
The perfect epitaph.
But I don't know them
And they don't know me
Not really.
Not any more.

It is easier to post
Celebrity obits
On social media
Than to know what words to use
To grieve these ghosts.

We flip through images,
Waiting for them to come back,
Wondering if they already did.
These ghosts have been gone.
Memories buried in these graves.
Long before death.