The Outage

They should not have been so surprised
to hear a clank or two
and feel a loosening
from the crematorium's basement.
He sunk through the floor
like an old Wurlitzer,

is how she phrased it
over a glass of Punt E Mes.
Back at the flat, a layering,
a better kind of burial:
his favourite Italian mechanism
that she paved with béchamel.

The powercut seemed apt:
candlelight makes everyone sensitive
and she needed to believe
that they understood who he had once been:
yes, nineteen, yes, topless,
and cruel as all hell in Barga.

The electric oven was still warm,
and the parmesan flecked
with carbon, in this light.
They finished it, of course,
and hummed with pleasure;
she was allowed to have no appetite.

The next few days were difficult.
Her daughters looked worried
or nauseous. They got up,
they sat down, they brewed loose
leaf herbal tea. And the pipes
ached in her walls.