A Soft Transition (tentative)

Working backwards from the end
of his life, he started new. He used
his bowling trophies as trashcans
where he set the ashes of his loved
ones. He took his unused golf clubs
and a hacksaw, made palm trees
to remind him of Puerto Rico. He
placed all his memories in a box
and burned them and danced
around the fire and chanted
for rain and got it and kept the rest.
He remembered turning sixty-five
and his living wife giving him
his first free blowjob on the way
to the Laundromat. He called
each of his living kids and said I’m
dying and they said fuck you old man
and then he called his dead kids
and set the phone down and left
it on the chair. And finally,
when his house was empty,
he felt satisfied enough to sit
in the middle of the wood floor
in the kitchen, wrap his arms
around his knees, close his eyes
and feel his century
old bones dissolving
into another life just beginning.