To Die Alone Today

A Poem

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Illustration by Daniel Davison in collaboration with Midjourney

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To Die Alone Today

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To die alone today is never to have lived. 
It’s a stone-cold obit on a Facebook page. 
Heart-hugging emojis and gold-faced frowns 
are cast (“in lieu of flowers”) on the up-scrolling
memorial to the departed—an outdated pic,
the best “we” (who knew him) could do
on such short notice. And the poor bastard 
had no living relatives, no kin—just us, 
his Facebook friends.

Leave a comment, share a memory as we 
eulogize “my buddy who’s passed” — “our poor 
pal, Ken…” — “To our friend and neighbor…” — “We’ll miss 
you, coach.” — “He was always a card.” — “He fought to 
the end.” — “Fuck cancer for taking our friend 
away!” — “He made my kids laugh.” — “He saved my life.” —
“We’ll share a drink, brother, when we meet again
in that huge-ass pub in the afterlife.”

Boilerplate, banal, a bunch of blah-blah-blah:
“sentimental horseshit” (as grandpa would say).
I type my comment with two thumbs on an iPhone,
as we sit in the booth, hoping bossman will pay.
Oh look, a ‘like’, someone thought I wrote well.—
“Moving tribute” they say with a row of red hearts.
The boss ain’t having it, “We’ll split the bill.”
We reach for our wallets. The intern farts.
“Don’t know about y’all, but I ate my fill!”
the kid says as we laugh, grab our coats, and depart.

“Please share this GoFundMe to help with the costs 
of the funeral.” —And the mourners start melting away. 
“The family is loaded, what a gauche thing to post.”
“Did he go to our high-school?”
“Didn’t know him, can’t say.”
“We met maybe once at a bistro in Bedford, 
but that would’ve been in my fraternity days.”
Poor Ken collects his last few “likes” 
as the mourning period draws to its close. 
“Remember long ago when we ran on the blacktop,
and Ken fell down and broke his nose?”—
“Wasn’t him.” And the comment is no longer there.

The so-called living go about their lives: 
“My boyfriend and I did a thing! See the 
ring?” — “If you support this jackass, unfriend
me now!” — “We’re heading to Florida, we’ll
be back in the spring.”

Those who die today return each year
as a fond “memory” we like to share. 
“We think of you often, we miss you a lot.”
A blatant lie, but we just don’t care.
And the living store up the heart-hugging emojis 
and gold-faced frowns, claiming these as our own, 
the reactions—the “likes”—that belonged to poor Ken,
our dear friend, who died unwept and alone.

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