Charon, navigator of death, considers Craig’s List.

At the end of life

your bits don’t die simultaneously.  

They drop out of the race one by one

by one

without even a backward glance. 

A brain cell here, now a few in the femoral artery—

the liver, the kidney, the left great toe. 

You scan your approaching horizon

for any whole thing to hold onto. 

Each piece of you slips away

like the California coastline. 

What will be left?

Your remaining inventory—

(gleaming granite countertops, burgeoning bookshelves,

the fridge and the car and the book full of dreams)

all wave goodbye from an outgoing train carrying

your medulla oblongata, the regulation of the heart—

—your name.

Quickly now, what’s left?

What’s to show from this life you so lately lived?

What can be salvaged from the ragged breath

that slows

stops

starts insincerely

and then

slows again…

                 Rhonda Palmer

 charon