Mom comes back
with two big white
to-go boxes
full of breaded chicken
it might
give others closure
but I hate a dead body
so I hide
for three hours
in the back room
and ate cheese
and crackers
and apples
and then Mom’s chicken
“wow,”
Aunt Janet says,
“you sure
can put down
a lot of food”
Mom says
“he’s a college kid
he can have as much
as he wants”
“right,”
says Janet,
“I’ll have some
too”
it might seem cold
to her
but I didn’t care about
a pickled corpse
in a black to-go box
and
with mashed potatoes in my cheeks
I couldn’t smell the formaldehyde